Sneak Peek: Fairmont Fujairah Beach Resort

The team stand in the lobby of the hotel; [L-R] Heinz Giering, Omar Souab, Khaled Al-Idrissi, and Ayuko Suzuki.

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.”

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