Hotelier Middle East checks out the hotly anticipated new hotel on the block, The Address, Down Town Burj Dubai, where hotel manager Cora De Conceicao-Stuart, executive assistant manager - F&B Serge Cuypers and director of catering and conference services Alma Au Yeung explain what the hype is really all about.
Hotel Manager
Cora De Conceicao-Stuart joined the hotel a year ago, bringing valuable experience of launching a brand.
"Before this I was director of sales and marketing for Bvlgari Bali, which I opened and launched, which was a great experience," she says.
"The reason I was attracted to the Address project was not so much because it was an opening, but because it was the chance to launch a totally new brand - a new identity. That had in some ways been the case with Bvlgari, but for The Address I was starting up a whole new brand that no one knew and that made it very exciting."
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De Conceicao-Stuart adds that she was even more excited by the prospect of making her first foray into operations as a hotel manager. "I've been preparing for this position for the past two years, wanting to get back into operations, so this was an opportunity that I couldn't resist," she explains.
When De Conceicao-Stuart first joined, the whole brand concept was still a blank canvas, she explains.
"The brand didn't even have a name or a real identity, so to be able to really conceptualise the whole identity and translate it into an offering to our guests was a dream," she says.
The role of hotel manager "has to be broken up into two parts: the pre-opening stage and the operational stage", says De Conceicao-Stuart.
"In the pre-opening, my job was more to do with conceptualising what The Address was about, trying to bring that to life in this hotel with small touches. Obviously we had to do a massive amount of recruiting and that was fun, because we really went for personalities," she continues. "Many of our staff may not have much experience, but they were selected for having the right attitude."
Now, in the post-opening stage, the emphasis is on delivering the brand "with integrity", De Conceicao-Stuart says. "I think the most important thing is having that integrity in delivering what you promise and my role is to ensure that happens,' she states."
De Conceicao-Stuart believes the main draw of the new brand is the name. "‘The Address' is a very bold statement, but it's not arrogant; it suggests a certain draw," she explains.
"I'm quite surprised at how fast the name has spread, simply by word-of-mouth," she adds. "It will take time for the name to properly travel, but I think so far it's done pretty well."
It is the brand's determination to offer something different that will cement its status among top hotels in the world, according to De Conceicao-Stuart.
"One of the areas where a lot of hotels make mistakes is that they try to be too cookie-cutter and restricted in what they say and do," she states. "So we want to not to be so scripted about how we approach everything.
"We want to stay true to that philosophy; you can't change a building every five years, but by being ready to adapt and meet any demand with top quality service - that will keep the offering current."
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