GM Interview: Hassan Elwahidi, Doubletree JBR

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.

“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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“You cannot do everything as a general manager, so you have to make sure there is a structure that empowers the team and the people around you. The great thing about being a Hilton hotel is that Hilton gives us great tools to develop our team members.

“We have a series of programmes — I’ve done most of them as well — to make sure that we hire the right people and that people have the right talent and training,” Elwahidi asserts.

“Opening a hotel is not easy and one of the keys to success is having the right people; people who went through the ‘Shine’ programme [a Hilton training programme designed for department heads to progress to a director level], or management training programmes.

“Once you have the right team, the company supports the organisation of work. We have a tool that gives a list of tasks that have to be done in each department and by each person, and this is done in coordination with the team.”
The training process follows a three-step programme, where the team first watches the trainer perform a task, followed by the staff and trainer working on a task together.

Finally, the staff member performs the job with the trainer observing and offering feedback — a process that Elwahidi believes is extremely effective.

It’s also clear that employee welfare and talent development among the staff are priorities for Elwahidi, who says it’s important to stick to allocated working hours.

“We are very particular about working hours. If I’m a room attendant, I should get no more than ‘x’ number of rooms, which is the industry standard.

“There are hotels even in this area, where you are given far more rooms to clean in a working day, and then you tend to work extra hours, but you don’t get paid overtime, you are not given your hours back in lieu.

“Another thing is meals. We have three buffet meals, seven days a week and this is closely monitored. We pay a higher price than most hotels and this is just to make sure that the meals produced for our team are of better quality than average.”

The attention paid to staff seems to have paid off in terms of customer service. A look through the hotel’s TripAdvisor page shows only positive feedback about team members, with staff being lauded for their intuitive service.

“We went through an extensive selection process. We handpicked people based on the fact that we saw potential in them. We believe in retaining people with high potential, where they go through succession planning, which is very motivating. It’s a newly opened hotel, and you can already see promotions and transfers taking place. This is very encouraging and it motivates people to stay with our hotel,” Elwahidi enthuses.

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Building a presence

With teams and training in place, Elwahidi’s priorities are now on operations and building the hotel’s presence in the market. As a new property, the sales team is supported by the regional office when working with the travel trade and promoting the property. While he can’t reveal details about occupancy at the hotel, Elwahidi is keen to assure us that he’s happy with the way numbers have been growing.

“We have the support of the regional office and the regional sales team who prepared the grounds for the hotel before it went on the market. There’s also the side channel of the Hilton HHonors loyalty programme members, so that is an additional database with maximum outreach globally,” he explains.

“There are different levels of how the hotel promotes itself. We have our own sales team and then we tap into the resources available on a regional level.”

Being an all-suite property, with the smallest one-bedroom unit offering a generous 112m2 of space, the hotel generally attracts families and guests who stay longer than average. A fully equipped kitchen in at least half of the rooms is another feature that draws in long-stay guests.

“Most of our guests say we have some of the biggest hotel rooms they’ve ever experienced. Another popular feature is that half of the hotels in our inventory have fully-furnished kitchens. So if you’re six people in a three-bedroom suite for a week, you can cook your own food,” Elwahidi observes.

Add to that the hotel’s private beach and location along a shopping strip — The Walk at Jumeirah Beach Residence — and the source markets are generally holidaymakers from Europe and the UK, with visitors from the Gulf booking rooms depending on the time of year.

“During the Eid period you have people from the Gulf and during October to November, you have people from Europe… it varies according to the period, but we have a mix of clientele. So now [in November] the occupancy is mainly driven by Europeans on vacation.”

To record information on guests and manage bookings, staff use Hilton’s ‘OnQ’ system, a one-stop shop for guest management, reservations, check in and check out.

“Requests are logged on the CRM system, so if you check the reservations or guest details, you can get all the information about their preferences.

“For instance, if they want a room that’s away from the elevator, or on a high floor, we can accommodate their requests,” Elwahidi explains.

Additionally, feedback from guests is relayed during team briefings and TripAdvisor reviews are printed and shared at morning meetings so that service standards can be monitored accordingly.

“We tell our team members to look at the big picture first and then pay attention to all the little details,” he asserts.