It was a successful evening at the Hotelier Middle East Awards 2016 for Movenpick Hotel Jumeirah Lakes Towers as director of IT Roger Tabbal beat strong competition for IT Person of the Year.
Tabbal impressed all the judges by working on the deployment of the Opera Cloud 9 system, making Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts the first group to fully run and operate Opera from a cloud platform across the UAE, with only minor downtime.
Tabbal also improved work flow and reduced costs by centralising and negotiating contracts, while his guest-facing initiatives led to greater guest interaction and recognition, also ensuring staff members have greater access to internet.
Speaking of his award, Tabbal said: “Winning feels amazing, I was not expecting this, it is actually my second shortlisting, my first was in 2012, and so after four years of waiting it feels great to win this prestigious award in 2016.”
Tabbal fought off competition from a strong list of nominees, including: Fairmont the Palm Dubai director of IT Ahmed Disokey, Emirates Palace Hotel director of IT Mehmet Akdeniz, InterContinental Jeddah IT manager Muhammad Hafeez Iqbal, Al Ghurair Rayhaan by Rotana and Arjaan by Rotana director of IT Prajeeth Johnson and Damac Hotels & Resorts IT support manager Shady Elashi.
RELATED: See all the shortlisted nominees here
Commenting on his role in deploying the Opera Cloud 9 system, Tabbal said: “Introducing Cloud 9 was very challenging, especially as we are the first hospitality company to use Opera.” He added: “We rolled it out in Dubai in two of our hotels, moving from a standalone system to a cloud system is challenging, even one minute of down time is considered a disaster.”
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The Highly Commended nominee in this category is Prajeeth Johnson from Al Ghurair Rayhaan by Rotana and Arjaan by Rotana. Judges commended him for his dedication to the needs of both guests and colleagues alike.
Tabbal added: “What really made this [Cloud 9] successful was team work, we really needed the support of everyone in the hotel to make this a success. We still now facing some issues but we are correcting them one by one. It feels like we are leading the way – everyone in the industry is looking at us, as we were the first to make this decision.”
Roger has a vast knowledge in technology and innovation fields thanks to more than 15 years’ experience in hotel’s operation, applications and systems and project management. He has worked across the globe, holding different managerial positions in different countries including six hotels opening in UAE.
The IT Person of the Year award 2016 was sponsored by Room Operations and presented by managing director Erkan Tatlidil.
The twelfth annual Hotelier Middle East Awards took place on October 26, 2016 at The Ritz-Carlton DIFC.
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