Sneak Peek: Fairmont Fujairah Beach Resort

The Fairmont Fujairah Beach Resort, developed by UAE-based Mina Al Fajer Real Estate, was first announced in 2010, and since then has had its opening date move across the years. Last year, it opted on the side of caution, aiming for an April 2017 opening. However, the property has already soft-opened, with the official opening party planned for Q2 2017.

The general manager, Omar Souab, who was previously the hotel manager at the Fairmont Dubai, says that opening ahead of time was a challenge. He tells Hotelier: “We had initially planned to open on April 1, because we wanted to open the hotel and beach club at the same time. Then we moved the date to early January because we took a decision to open the hotel without the beach club. But then we had to open earlier, so my team and I overcame the challenge of opening the hotel two weeks before the target date which was a big achievement.

“It was not an easy task because we had to move forward quite a few programmes of training but we managed, and I think that it was actually a good thing to do because it gave us time to fine tune the service and to make sure that we are at the level that we are today. The owners understood that it was important to open softly and then start building the service quality and fine tune the product before we do an official launch, and we supported that wish.”

The beach club, which is still under construction, is set to open in May, reports Souab. The spa, when Hotelier visited, was also awaiting opening, scheduled for February 1. One of the restaurants, The Copper Lobster, was yet to open, while the others had commenced operations. The 180-room art-inspired hotel located in the Mina Al Fajer mixed-use development was designed by Stickman, and offers a mosaic-tiled swimming pool, children’s club, the second Willow Stream Spa in the UAE, a fully-equipped fitness centre and dive centre, along with five F&B outlets, expansive outdoor space, and three meeting rooms, including a large pre-function area. When one approaches the property, it is reminiscent of traditional architecture in the region, but one step inside showcases the heavy focus on art — especially with nods to the region and its culture — which can be found across the entire property.

Souab says: “Opening a property is very special because you get to experience or take all the decisions from the beginning.”

Starting with recruiting the team, Souab is very proud of the 170-strong hotel team today. “It’s not an easy task because there are a lot of things to think about and a lot of challenges to overcome. But when you open a hotel, and you have your first guest and the guest comes in and they say: ‘Wow this is an amazing property’, it’s very rewarding.”

Fairmont Ajman and Fairmont Fujairah Beach Resort cluster director of sales and marketing Khaled Al-Idrissi, who started work on this project in June 2016, says the first target of the property is to start attracting local business. He notes: “Transient business tends to be much faster to react with regards to generating revenue for our hotel. Transient meaning anywhere through our brand.com, our online travel agents’ network that we have, and working through that into building our wholesale and tour business which takes a little bit longer to achieve because it is international.”

Al-Idrissi says the hotel’s reservations team is already getting a lot of interest from UAE-based nationals and residents for staycations, with weekends doing exceptionally well since the soft opening. Other top source markets include Germany, the UK and CIS. Souab agrees with his cluster DOSM and says the main focus right now is the local market.

The team has already started the marketing messaging, with a huge focus on digital. Display advertising that’s geographically targeted will be the main focus of the property’s strategy. Al-Idrissi elaborates: “We also look at display in multi-language and multi-device, and how we’re able to cater to those different areas. With display, we also look at a closer approach of retargeting, so we use the precision remarketing approach which then allows us to spend less with more of a better target.

“Nowadays the online travel agent world has very deep pockets of marketing, so we try not to compete directly on organic search or paid search; it’s more about display for us which has a much higher return. We still invest in optimisation of organic search through specific keyword mappings, and we work through paid search but our core focus remains to be the display.”

With an inventory of 180 rooms, the hotel doesn’t plan to cater to large meetings and events, but certainly to smaller incentive groups, confirms Al-Idrissi. “Our facility for conference and banqueting is not that extensive, so it does not give us the ability to attract groups of much bigger size which is actually not what we want to achieve. Having said that, there is always room for smaller MICE and incentive groups. We see that already a lot of requests come in for chairman, board of director meetings, 20-30 people incentives, and those are the kind of groups that we like. It’s going to work well to cater to a group like that and we’re going to be able to — as a smaller hotel — have much more in-depth service levels because of our size,” he explains.

Al-Idrissi comments: “People like to have a high calibre of hotel like Fairmont in a location like this. It brings a new standard of service because Fairmont is upper-luxury.

“We have a lot of good hotels in the city of Fujairah, which are very well established, but I’d like to think that we have taken a step forward to model what luxury is and what we have achieved in Ajman, in fact, we are achieving now in Fujairah.”

Souab also emphasises the luxury connotations of the property. He tells Hotelier he considers hotels such as the Le Méridien Al Aqah Beach Resort, Fujairah Rotana Resort & Spa, Miramar Al Aqah Beach Resort, and Radisson Blu Resort, Fujairah as his comp-set.

Souab continues: “Not in terms of product because they opened a few years back, but in terms of location, and they are all five star hotels. I believe that Fairmont has a higher positioning so we’re the only luxury hotel at this stage and that’s the positioning I want to give to the hotel — tailor-made service, very high-end, very luxury. We have the newcomer that will open in June — the InterContinental Fujairah which will help establish the destination as a luxury destination.”

And that’s something he is keen to emphasise: that all the properties in the emirate working towards destination marketing. Souab notes: “The hotels that have opened before us have done a great job in promoting Fujairah as a very different destination. They’ve managed to capture quite a bit of business from Europe and the expatriates of the other emirates. They have positioned themselves as five-star but we’re coming in as luxury.”

He terms his hotel as “boutique” (traditionally, boutique hotels are 100 rooms or less), and says due to being part of the Mina Al Fajer complex, the Fairmont Fujairah Beach Resort has a slightly different positioning when compared to the other hotels.

“But the InterContinental will come in with the same strategy as us; I know that they have around 190 rooms. Both of us will drive the destination upwards and its positioning as a luxury destination.”

Souab concludes: “What I’m looking forward to now is opening the full hotel, to drive it to maturity, to establish it as a pioneer in luxury in Fujairah, and as one of the best boutique hotels in the UAE.”