Hotelier catches up with Hassan Elwahidi, general manager at DoubleTree by Hilton Dubai – Jumeirah Beach, half a year after the upscale property opened. Elwahidi explains how a successful pre-opening phase paved the way for a positive performance in the first six months of operations, and he reveals what’s next
Hilton Worldwide opened DoubleTree by Hilton Dubai — Jumeirah Beach in July last year. Located at the end of the 1.7km JBR Walk, the 110-key all-suite hotel marked the second property in the emirate under the upscale DoubleTree by Hilton brand, and one of six in the region.
At the helm of the property is general manager Hassan Elwahidi, who came on board in September 2011, and was “alone amongst hundreds of contractors and workers”, he recalls. Wasting no time, Elwahidi began appointing the rest of the executive team, 90% of which were recruited from within Hilton Worldwide.
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“Usually when you join a property as general manager, your role is to build the operations side of the hotel. So we worked in parallel to make sure we built our operations, and we did this on four main levels. Firstly we built the operations team, with everything around it — training, recruitment, etc.
“We worked on the commercial aspects as well as the financial and the human resources factors,” he explains.
Recruitment for the property started early, and Elwahidi — who was new to Dubai at the time — depended heavily on support from Hilton’s regional office during the process.
“When you open a property, you are starting from scratch. So you need people that are quite experienced, and people who know the culture, so we know we are running a property the way we are expected to,” he states.
In addition to recruiting from within the group, the hotel held open days in Dubai, and carried out recruitment trips in countries such as India and Nepal, as well as Doha, due to the level of interest from candidates there.
Online channels such as Hilton’s careers portal and websites such as Caterer Global were also used during the time. After conducting between 5000 to 6000 interviews, the teams finally recruited 169 employees.
Once in place, the hotel’s operations and human resources teams, led by the property’s director of operations Gajendra Sharma, began working on training the new recruits.
Staff empowerment plays a big role in the hotel’s culture, and tools offered by Hilton Worldwide also aided the training process, Elwahidi explains.
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