Having been in post for six months, FRHI Hotels & Resorts senior vice president operations for Middle East, Africa and India, Sami Nasser, is preparing to move quickly in order to bring to fruition the company’s goal of doubling its hotel offering over the next five years
Fairmont Raffles Hotels International (FRHI) is holding the starting pistol in preparation for an expansion project which sees the company target 50% growth over the next five years.
Getting set on the start block for the Middle East leg is a new ‘integration team’, which will oversee all three of the company’s brands, ensuring development keeps pace with this bold ambition.
Newly appointed senior vice president operations Sami Nasser will be by the side of his 8000 staff — a number also set to double in the next five years — to ensure projects reach the finish line.
In January 2014, Michael Glennie, president and chief operating officer of FRHI, the parent company of luxury and upper upscale hotel brands Raffles Hotels & Resorts, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts and Swissôtel Hotels & Resorts, announced a robust growth strategy for key markets, with openings this year in Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Globally, he revealed aggressive development plans in place to achieve a projected target of 50% growth over the next five years.
Overseeing the Saudi opening Glennie refers to, is the company’s French-Lebanese senior vice president operations for Middle East, Africa and India, Sami Nasser, appointed in July last year with the aim of “making sure [the company] has the right resources in the region to support this growth.”
Fairmont Riyadh marks FRHI’s first Saudi venture outside of Makkah, where 3000 rooms are spread across its three brands, including 1299 allotted to the iconic Makkah Clock Royal Tower, a Fairmont Hotel. Having built up a huge base of pilgrim visitors at the Makkah properties, Nasser is confident the Riyadh opening will reel in a new segment.
“The corporate Saudi market will respond very well to the Fairmont Riyadh,” he comments.
“We’ve already had negotiations with various big companies on long-stay offers and we will create a lot of demand with our food and beverage and spa offering so I’m very positive about this hotel.”
Nasser adds that brand awareness won't be an issue in Riyadh given the fame of the Makkah Clock Royal Tower and the growing sophistication of the domestic Saudi market: “The Saudis are going to The Savoy in London, The Plaza in New York — two Fairmont hotels — so they know the brand”.
Despite the current oversupply facing Riyadh, with occupancy remaining static and 38 hotels coming online in the city in the next three years, Nasser is confident that falling rates will not be a problem: “[Average rate] might have gone down from US $300 to $280 or $270 but it’s still great compared to other destinations in the region and in Europe,” he comments, adding that rates dropping is “normal” as competition grows, and upcoming infrastructure will justify the need for more supply.
“The more hotels you have, the more competition but this helps put standards up very high. We have lots of projects and construction coming up so we’ll need more hotels. Otherwise, why would operators go and develop more and more there?”
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Nasser adds that growth plans for Saudi Arabia don’t stop at Fairmont Riyadh, explaining that there is potential scope for more hotels in Riyadh, Jeddah and Medinah — cities which he says are “very important” to the company.
Key to these plans, however, will be performance of currently operating hotels, something he says is crucial to the company’s shareholders, Katara Hospitality, an affiliate of the Qatar Investment Authority, and long-term strategic partner of Fairmont, Kingdom Holdings — 95% of which is owned by HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud.
“According to how we perform, this will mark the speed of FRHI’s development in the region. Owners want to make sure things work first and then they develop,” Nasser explains.
Although Nasser admits that the company’s main interest in the GCC region is Saudi Arabia, FRHI has five other openings in the pipeline for the region, four of which are in the Emirates. These are the 252-key Fairmont Ajman and 171-room Fairmont Fujairah set to open this year.
Next year the 240-room Fairmont Amman will come to Jordan, and in 2016 Swissôtel Dubai Al Jadaf will provide 280 rooms, completing FRHI’s collection of its three brands in Dubai, while Fairmont Abu Dhabi Marina will add 513 to the UAE capital. Nasser also claims to have Doha, Beirut and Dammas on his wish list, and he admits that he would like to see another Dubai property.
“It would be great to have [another] Raffles in Dubai, but it must be on the beach. We have a Fairmont the Palm and a Fairmont Dubai which are doing very well and I think there’s a market for Swissôtel, which is why it’s coming.”
On entering the smaller emirates of Ajman and Fujairah, Nasser claims that he doesn’t s ee any challenges in being outside of the main tourism hubs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi: “I think both are really beautiful resort hotels. There are lots of groups coming and Fujairah enjoys a great reputation in Russia, Germany and the local market who go to the emirate for weekend getaways”.
He adds that both emirates have excellent occupancy levels and are “becoming really well-known in terms of image”. Positive about the Abu Dhabi Marina opening, Nasser adds that the government is pushing to create more and more entertainment and hotels to enhance the tourism offering.
To support the Middle East pipeline across the three FRHI brands, which will see the company’s current portfolio of 18 hotels in the region jump up to 38 within the next five years, with staff and room numbers to double from 8000 and 7000 respectively, a sturdy ‘integration team’ — made up of experts across all disciplines including marketing, distribution, f&b, spa, design and HR — has been implemented at the Dubai corporate office.
The team is on hand to make sure the upcoming pipeline properties “open right”, explains Nasser. “Owners are spending millions so our hotels must be opened with the right people to succeed,” he says.
“The integration team is dedicated to this, which is unusual because there’s a cost involved. We have built this team because we have a lot of openings and in just this region we’re doubling the size of our network. We have to make sure we have the best people with us so that we are the best operator in the region.”
Bringing the Raffles, Fairmont and Swissôtel together under one umbrella in corporate office marks an important transition for the company and Nasser believes that this will increase efficiency of owner-operator relations.
“One of the main advantages of the new regional structure is our ability to be in close proximity to our owners, guests and hotels,” Nasser comments — harking back to a similar process he went through as senior vice president of operations for Middle East, Africa, Indian Ocean for Sofitel where he was responsible for the operations of a portfolio of 28 hotels and 7179 rooms.
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“Accor decided to take on Sofitel and make it a luxury brand in the region,” Nasser explains. “I was with them for four years and we brought Sofitel to where it is today.” Having worked across all Accor brands in operations and distribution among other disciplines, Nasser brings experience of mid-scale hotels, and how to optimise costs and spend to achieve good investments.
In terms of leadership and management, the key philosophy he advocates is being ready to move fast: “I’m quite clear on what I’m doing and saying. I go fast, and maybe too fast for some people but I really like challenging them because we need to be one of the best performing chains.” Nasser adds that his pet peeve is time-wasting and spending hours in meetings, asserting “I like when people move fast.”
Getting the right staff around him then is key to being able to drive forward the region’s growth plans and implement the quick decisions he holds dear. When recruiting, Nasser says that the right people should be “completely different [to him]”, adding that having a team of staff that complement each other is vital.
“I take the best experts in terms of finance, HR, etc., but we have to work together as a team and understand what it means to operate a hotel.”
Having been a GM for several years and coming from a sales and marketing background, Nasser believes the key challenges in a GM’s role are pushing a hotel’s central reservation system rather than relying on third party booking systems.
“We have to develop our own booking systems,” Nasser asserts. “They are important for the future. In addition to this, he says that loyalty programmes are a crucial aspect of operations for the brands, and something “the GM has to push”.
Working closely with the GMs and knowing the hotels well is important to Nasser who claims: “I visit the hotels very often, I know the GMs — now we have great leaders, FRHI has a good selection process.”
Part of the success of leadership in the company, according to Nasser, is having the SVPs in place regionally in Toronto, Singapore and Zurich covering their own respective regions — to make sure decisions are made quickly and acted upon.
“I will focus this year on gathering my team together,” says Nasser. “We have to be really professional in each department so the focus will be close to hotel operations to see them growing,” he comments, adding that a key concern will be maximising the currently operating properties to ensure they are as efficient as possible.
Commenting on his own appointment, Nasser tentatively admits that he thinks there has been a positive impact already.
“I think the company brought in someone who understands the company and who comes from a sales and marketing background. I think they did the selection so that they can grow very fast and be close to the staff so that decisions can be taken quickly,” he comments.
“We don’t want the decisions to go to Toronto, so all the SVPs are now based in the regions. You have to be part of it to understand it.”
Ultimately, it’s Nasser’s goal for FRHI to be “recognised as the preferred hotel operator in the region by owners”.
He comments that another opportunity and sometimes a challenge is that news travels fast: “In this region, people talk and it can go very fast so word of mouth is very important. They come to your hotel, they like your lobby, they like your food and beverage and word travels.”
And so the race is on for Sami Nasser and FRHI Hotels & Resorts, with rooms and staff doubling, a centralisation of management for the company’s three brands and implementation of the ‘integration team’. However, one thing Nasser is confident of is that if he, and the company are quick off the mark, success will come at every level of operations.