It was this opportunity to re-interpret and deconstruct an entire hotel brand that most appealed to Gaymer-Jones’ creative side, and which somewhat surprisingly had many parallels to his past life in the kitchen.
“When I was in the kitchen I was never much of a Gordon Ramsay type, screaming and shouting at everyone,” he says. “But what I always saw as important is to ensure that you have a good team around you, all working together like an orchestra. I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by fabulous people throughout my career, and by extracting the best of their talents, you are then able to create this fabulous hotel experience almost from nothing.
“And it was the same when I got the opportunity to come to Sofitel, as we were starting with this completely blank canvas. The Sofitel brand needed refreshing completely, and to be given the creative licence to work on the brand the way we wanted to work on it was really exciting.”
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Therefore, on taking the role, the first item on Gaymer-Jones’ agenda was to assemble his management team and tour every Sofitel hotel, to first get a feel for the brand and get his first impressions of the size of task he had taken on.
“When I arrived I was given a remit to create a successful portfolio of luxury hotels within the group, and at that time we already had 206 properties, some of which were fantastic, but some were frankly not where they should have been.”
While evaluating each hotel Gaymer-Jones’ team began using a ‘luxury index’, based on different factors such location, clientele and whether the necessary investment was available to upgrade the hotel to the correct standard of luxury.
“We did that all over the world and pared the original 206 hotels right back to 89. And at the same time we introduced a brand new set of luxury standards for the brand, based partly on how other French luxury brands positioned their products in the luxury market,” he says.
These luxury standards were founded on three pillars including design, with a strong essence of French style inside every property; F&B, which was to combine classic French cuisine with local styles; and finally creating a ‘cultural link’ in every property, where Parisian style was combined with each location, whether that be Shanghai or Dubai.
“We’re not known as a large group hotel, and as a result we’re able to be much more intimate in style. When we were in the planning stages of deciding what kind of brand we wanted to be, we decided we wanted to focus on the provoking the senses of our guests, instead of say just being a big MICE hotel,” he says.
“That is why the female business and leisure travellers tend to be particularly loyal to our hotels, as we’re not seen as a male dominated style of hotel”.
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