Laurent Voivenel took office in October 2013 as CEO of hospitality management holdings following a 13-year career with Starwood Hotels & Resorts.
Voivenel cites young people and families, particularly those driving over from Saudi Arabia, as a target. “If you look at the number of Saudi cars coming to Dubai, it’s enormous. Families can come and stay in a cheap, modern, clean hotel. Do you want to travel 25 minutes further into Dubai and pay AED600 (US $163) per night, or do you want to stay at Ecos for half the price?”
Ecos Hotels will cater purely for bed and breakfast and the initial project is expected to have 200–250 rooms and just 50 staff.
“Room service for a 250-room hotel requires around six or seven staff; a restaurant would be about 100 so you can drastically reduce staff numbers. We don’t want to reduce the quality, just the number of services.”
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And Voivenel is careful to mention that he doesn’t mean overworking a smaller number of staff to cut payroll costs.
“If I could change something I’d like payroll and staff to become part of the asset and not a liability on the balance sheet, for one very simple reason — a beautiful property is nothing without its people.”
This is a lesson Voivenel says he learned during a meeting with an advisor to the Bill Clinton administration in Hawaii, who told him: “Laurent, you have everything to be great, smart as you are; you just have to learn how to be nice to people”.
“The reality was very simple, I had to stop taking myself seriously, but take the business seriously,” he says.
Taking the business seriously for Voivenel means implementing his core values, and never straying from these. He points to a sign on his office desk that reads: ‘Even if it’s my right, is it the right thing to do?’
“For me a value is non-negotiable,” he explains. “Whatever values I have, I don’t negotiate on them, regardless of the cost.
Voivenel highlights the alignment of his own values to those of the company, which under his management continue as those set out by his predecessor Michel Noblet. “Honesty, transparency and integrity — that’s what I want HMH to be,” he says.
Living by these standards is not easy in the Middle East hotel business, but Voivenel refers to King Louis XIV of France as his inspiration for how to deal with people.
“I think you need to keep your friends close but your enemies even closer,” he asserts, with a grin. And this is something Voivenel will continue to bear in mind as he takes forward a company that has had to fight for survival — but continues to stand strong nevertheless.
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