The Madinat Jumeirah resort, now a sprawling area in its own right, has seen the completion of its fourth chapter, the opening of Jumeirah Al Naseem, a little over a year ago. What has changed in the last year however, has been the introduction of a refreshed management team.
In 2017, we saw the appointment of a managing director for the entire resort (Stefan Bollhalder) — including all properties within it — along with a new general manager for Jumeirah Al Qasr and Dar Al Masyaf (Pinar Kartal Timer), while those properties’ earlier GM has moved over to Jumeirah Al Naseem (Azar Saliba). Andy Cuthbert remains as the GM of Mina A’Salam from his appointment in 2016.
I meet the new team on a sunny morning in Al Qasr, and what’s apparent from the start is the different specialisations that all of them bring to the table. Timer comes from a revenue and sales & marketing background, Cuthbert from a culinary history, Saliba from front office, while Bollhalder moved from culinary to management roles through his career.
Jokingly referring to themselves as “the four musketeers”, Bollhalder reveals that he became a first-time general manager when he was 38, and is now working in his fourteenth country — but this marks his first experience with a holiday resort.
Cuthbert discusses their dynamic further, saying that having done the events side of the business as well as outside catering, he’s thankful of the multi-dimensional capabilities of all the general managers. “Working with someone like Azar, for example, who is strong with rooms and then with my events and F&B experience, when we get the big pieces of business coming in-house, it’s quite easy to synergise the entire resort,” he adds.
He adds: “Having strong individuals in the other hotels that understand the rooms operations far better than I do, I can utilise their skillset. There cannot be a silo effect; it just doesn’t work. We are very lucky with the cross experience around this table from Stefan running corporate but also the three GMs running their individual units.”
Timer points out that with the conferences and incentives market going strong in Mina A’Salaam and Jumeirah Al Naseem, her areas of control (Al Qasr and Dar Al Masyaf) enjoy “the overflow of the leisure business”.
She also adds that guest experience across the property is of utmost importance to her. She says: “I’m trying to create new experiences. When I came I looked into what we can improve — so for example, I am looking to have better services for our kids because they are influencers and determine the holidays for the families.
“I’m also looking into the guest experience for regular guests — who are more than 40% at the moment.”
Timer adds: “We are complementing each other with our competencies, and Stefan is the maestro pushing us to give our best performance.”
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