From left to right, the executive team: Patricia Mutie, executive housekeeper; Spencer Lee Black, executive chef; Joby Thomas, director of finance; Riad Haidar, director of food and beverage; Stefan Viard, general manager; Dragos Paraschiv, director of human resources; Samir Arora, resident manager; Lloyd Fernandes, director of engineering.
Emaar Hospitality Group’s new upscale brand Vida promises to inject some life into the traditional hotel model, with fresh design, out-of-the-box hiring, top technology and a warm, homely feel
When a new brand launches, here at Hotelier we are always intrigued. When it’s at a conversion property, where the ownership and management company remain the same yet introduce a new concept, we are even more interested. How different will it be? Why the change? And what gap in the market will it fill?
The hotel in question is Emaar Properties-owned Vida Downtown Dubai, formerly the Qamardeen Hotel, first run by Southern Sun before Emaar Hospitality Group took the management in-house last July.
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The hotel closed in September for a major refurbishment, with the Vida Hotels and Resorts brand officially unveiled at Arabian Travel Market in May and the new hotel opening six weeks later on June 16 2013.
The marketing collateral at ATM proposed a brand targeting the younger generation; the cool, corporate traveller that combines work and play. Before I visited the hotel, I’d imagined a very urban, clean, white interior, perhaps with funky lighting and gadgets aplenty.
Upon visiting at the beginning of July, what I actually found was a very warm, friendly welcome into a property that, while uncluttered and modern in some areas, was far more homely and relaxing than I had expected.
General manager Stefan Viard, who has spent nine years in Dubai working first for Jumeirah before joining Emaar Hospitality Group with the Address Hotels+Resorts brand five years ago, says this is exactly the impression he is hoping to create. He says that while the exact look of the Downtown hotel may not be applied to subsequent properties in the portfolio, the feel will be.
“What is defined is the ‘homey’ style; it needs to be comfortable,” he says. “No lobby will be bling; once you come in you should feel relaxed and comfortable to be here.”
Another brand standard is the open business centre; a Z-shaped wooden table in the lobby complete with huge iMacs, designed to encourage networking and be easy to use. There are no reception desks as such; instead check-in is carried out via iPad anywhere in the lobby area, with passports scanned via iPad and the key-cutting machine in the lobby lounge.
“The check in procedure is very personalised, you can check in anywhere you want but we would not have a counter between us,” says Viard. “This is really the living room of the hotel and we try to keep it like that so you feel [like it is] a home away from home. That is the whole concept. What you like at home we try to do here as well.”
This is not a “home away from home” for everyone though. Vida Hotels are aimed at the “age group 25 upwards to 40, 42 years of age, that should be the ideal,” reveals Viard.
Brands such as Citizen M and Andaz by Hyatt were researched, admits Viard, and one can only assume Starwood’s W — which has branded its lobbies as Living Rooms — was also a source of inspiration for the concept.
“The Vida brand is all about being alive and inspired; we want to be a young vibrant brand for young entrepreneurs. We want to be an additional portfolio to the brands we have already with Emaar Hospitality, we felt we could look into a different market as well, a younger market, a fresh look overall, all very bright, the music is upbeat — that’s how we came to the name Vida, which means ‘life’ in Spanish, so ‘alive and inspired’ is our tagline,” he explains.
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