Nightlife interview: Spencer Hartwell
Caterer Middle East recentley spoke with Media One Hotel's Spencer Hartwell about the property's plans for Dubai most up and coming nightlife venue:
What is Q43 and who it is designed to target?
Q43 is a new venue opening at the Media One Hotel in Dubai. We are launching it because we think there is a large gap in the four-star venue market in Dubai. If you want to jump in the Lambo, reserve a table, spend 10,000 dirhams and let Dubai know you own a gold card, there are many places where you can do this.
We are targeting ‘normal people’ — who can’t or won’t spend that amount on a table for two hours, people who like to go out with friends more than once a week. We realised that so much of Dubai is upscale and a little bit pretentious — who has got the most money gets treated the best and the normal man tends to get forgotten.
Why there was a need for such an offering in the Media City area of Dubai?
Places that are extremely well-designed with high levels of fit-out that don’t charge the earth simply don’t exist here. We intend to change that. We sit in a perfect location — the top floor of the Media One Hotel. Communities like Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Jumeirah Beach Residences, Dubai Marina, The Greens and Springs are all only five minute taxi rides away.
Will Q43 offer anything else in addition to a busy nightlife?
Daytime business meetings, after-work dinner and drinks, crazy weekend events and more are all offered by Q43. We have created different zones within the venue: a restaurant which seats 100, a bar for 400, and a lounge that can fit 300. The outlet has got to be able to adapt and change.
In the day it’s a coffee/quick lunch environment, then it’s a great place for beer after work, then dinner, and then even later on, it’s a great place to dance. It has got to have all those different elements because it is such a big space; we have got to fill it with different aspects of what you can offer in nightlife.
That’s our challenge: to make three or four different venues within one so you have the ability and facility to move around the venue and feel different experiences depending on where you sit.
Will it be hotel-managed or independently operated?
Solutions Leisure is an independently owned nightlife business that has designed, owned and operated over 25 different F&B concepts over the last 15 years. We owned the only Ministry of Sound and Hed Kandi beach clubs in the world. Q43 has been designed to take a number of elements of the various places we have been involved in and offer our guests a very different, and all-in-one experience.
What are your hopes about the response it will receive?
We are building a venue that is warm and inviting; it’s all about your friends and having a good experience. We think there will be probably 400-500 people a night who will appreciate that kind of service where we are building bit more of a community around a fun nightlife experience.
You’ve mentioned it fills a gap in the market; how are guests going to feel the difference?
There are 100 venues in walking distance of each other and we want to make our customers feel like superstars because they chose us.
How is that going to happen?
It starts with the doorman who says thank you, the waiters who are appreciative — because every customer pays our salary. And rule 101 when we train our staff is: why are we here? We are here to give people a good time. So let us start in the right way. As soon as they arrive, if they are greeted by someone who is appreciative of them, we have put them in a good mood to have a good time. That’s a little bit about the USP of why we think our style of F&B in Dubai will be slightly different from the rest.
When it is due to open?
We are looking to open around early October.
Anything else about the venue you think will make it stand out from others in the area?
I think I would like to reveal that information for when we open. It is easy to write about how great we are going to be, and how nobody will have seen anything like this. I am sure come October 2013, every guest that walks through our doors will see what makes us stand out.