Life in the Big City: Interview with Madinat Jumeirah resort's management team

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.”

Saliba agrees with Timer and Cuthbert and says an in-depth meeting takes place every month with heads of department, where resort strategy around guests, colleagues and financials is discussed, all of which is communicated with the colleagues.

He comments: “It is a city within a city, and we are all linked to each other: most of our rooms are facing Burj Al Arab, and all our colleagues are encouraged to promote our outlets. Communication and sticking to our strategy is key.”

Bollhalder bolsters that comment and adds: “We have three focuses. We have colleagues, guests, and the financial focus. We have a core team of resort people who are also assisting each unit and that’s where we differentiate from others.

“The other thing is as Azar said, which is the balance scorecard where we have four teams who look at different fields of what we do around the resort and we meet monthly and look at the initiatives, and how we can improve on our service quality, on our guest satisfaction and our colleagues.

“We are driving our success in terms of financial results. We have the four of us who look at this with our financial team and optimise that in terms of not only revenue generation, but also looking at costs and how we can synergise particularly with manpower and that’s where everybody comes into how we can share and best allocate people.”

Cuthbert jumps in to say: “The complex is complex. On the balance scorecards and the teams that Stefan mentioned, we don’t just have a team of rooms looking after rooms, it’s across functional people who are on different teams, so we get a fresh pair of eyes. When the resort kicks in, when it pumps, it is manic. To orchestrate the events side which then has a knock-on effect on rooms and food and beverage, we must be good planners and this is key to the success.

“We are very lucky, we have some colleagues who have been here since pre-opening, many in the core operational level on the ground who get to know the guests very well. When we run our own events, we utilise our own colleagues… we have up to 400 colleagues when we do large events, and when we do outside events, we need a thousand colleagues to come and help — these people are coming out of the operations and not only from Madinat Jumeirah but Jumeirah Beach Hotel and Emirates Towers. Our resort when it pumps touches the entire company. Teamwork is very much part of our daily life.”

On the points of events, Bollhalder says that it’s that balance between events and private/individual clients. He explains: “The resort had this vision when it opened which was ‘everything considered’ and then a couple of years later, it was changed to ‘reason to return’. We looked at that recently at the beginning of the year. We all thought about it and said that good things don’t need to be changed, so we actually combined it, and now our vision for the resort moving forward is ‘All considered, a good reason to return’. We communicate that to our colleagues and our success is enabling us to switch from sometimes corporate events in C&I to looking after individual guests who come here to spend their holiday who needs more attention than perhaps a business traveller does.”

An important thread of thought that has run through what this management team has been talking about has been the people working at the resort. Saliba asserts this further when he says: “Along with the vision and guiding principle, what has been the success of Madinat Jumeirah is the colleagues living through Jumeirah hallmarks. We really live them; these include: always smile and greet guests before they greet me; never say no to our clients; and always treat colleagues and guests with respect and integrity. Those are the foundations of our success, supported by our vision for the hotel.”

With that statement, and recalling Cuthbert’s earlier assertion that there are still colleagues from the time of pre-opening, it’s interesting to note that there are some ‘long-timers’ within the company. They all reference Gerald Lawless, the previous executive chairman and CEO of Jumeirah Group, as one of their main influencers.

Saliba notes: “For me personally, it has always been leadership. I decided I wanted to work with Jumeirah when I was reading an article about Mr. Gerald Lawless and he said the most important assets for Jumeirah are colleagues. That was the hook for me.”

Timer adds: “For me it was another story in a way, because it was a takeover. I was instrumental in choosing Jumeirah because we had other hotel company management options and I was impressed by Jumeirah and how they deal with people, like Azar mentioned about the approach of Mr. Gerald Lawless. After so many years of seeing so many international chains, the way how they approach people strike me very much, it felt like it was a good family to belong to.”

Bollhalder, while newest to the resort, says that he has also met Lawless on many occasions. He reveals: “I remember well when I met Mr Lawless first which was just after Jumeirah Beach Hotel opened from being Chicago Beach and he impressed me with his vision and what he did.

“I came to this resort in 2005 and I had known many people who lived and worked here and when I was offered this position, I thought, where do you get a luxury resort of this scale anywhere in the world? And there are very few places. I thought that was a great proposition and a great challenge for me and looking at the expansion of the company and what it stands for, it made my decision easy.”

Saliba agrees and adds: “There are lots of good challenges that keeps us excited and motivated to keep doing better.”

Constantly doing better is important in an environment that keeps changing. With 15.8 million international visitors in 2017, and predictions of nearly 40,000 rooms from now until 2020, Dubai’s hospitality industry is not getting any less competitive. However, the team is striving to keep its quality levels high and now with the addition of Jumeirah Al Naseem to the portfolio, as Saliba says, the resort is matching the increasing demand placed on its reserves.

Bollhalder comments: “It’s one thing to keep and retain our guests and give them a reason to return. We have a high success rate of return guests and that’s absolutely fantastic, but we are also going into new markets — we have a very strong sales and marketing and PR team to see where we have new opportunities. The reputation of looking so well after our clients is where we have a real plus compared to our competitors. Of course, we have the best location and we have the nicest beach, and we have the best product.”

The resort’s busiest months are usually before the summer hits (March through April) and during the cooler months (October through to December) — in December 2017, the resort saw 3,200 people for example.

To this effect, Saliba points out: “We have become a destination of our own. We are not just a normal hotel — guests can stay here for seven days and not leave if they wanted to.”

The average length of stay for guests at the resort is five days, and while the main source markets include Russia, China and the UK, Bollhalder notes that the local market is key. “We need to be in their heart and mind to bring visitors here. This is a destination for the local community to show their guests.”

Saliba adds: “Our focus now is to maintain and grow these markets and work on improving our presence in China and India market. We have seen a huge increase in first quarter and this is where we see huge opportunities for us in the resort.”

There was admittedly a dip in 2012-2013 from the Russian market, says Cuthbert, but from 2015 onwards that market has been climbing up the charts again. He also believes that the Chinese market can be even more lucrative now. “With the visa on arrival regulations, people from China don’t have to travel in tour groups anymore so you get that HNWI who can stay in such a property. We are aiming to make Madinat Jumeirah and Dubai a focus, but for the 7-10 day tourist not for the 2.5 day tourist.”

Saliba reiterates the importance of regular guests, and reveals that in peak season, the resort witnesses around 55% regular clients. “The other thing is that we have many people who have been coming here for many years, with their children. And now those children are now coming here with their families.”

On that note, after recounting many examples of longstanding guests, Cuthbert says: “Look at who we are as a hospitality company. We have grown from the city, we are a Dubai company and people are attached to us.”

And with the people and the city, the management team asserts that the resort is also growing. Saliba adds: “This year and the long-term, we need to keep sourcing new markets, we need to make sure that more parts of the world know about Dubai and Madinat Jumeirah. We want to continuously improve on our offerings, either promotions, new food and beverage concepts.

“We also need to keep focusing on personalised service — we are known to be a luxury hospitality company and we must remain luxury in how we treat our clients. Luxury is not just about product but also the personal touches that we do with our client.”

Part of this involves working with the community and its people, notes Timer. She adds that in addition to trying to improve services, the hotels are looking to connect further with Dubai residents, with art for example.

Cuthbert adds on this point that listening to the customer is important. “We need to ensure we listen to feedback because we cannot become complacent. We look at the F&B landscape of Dubai, for example — we have 9,700 restaurants, TripAdvisor says 11,000 in New York. we are not agile, we will not win the race. Look after the repeat guests who are the most loyal brand ambassadors of what we have. We can’t lay on our laurels and we can’t think that they will come. We built it and they did come but many other things have been built as well.”

And with that, Bollhalder rounds off the conversation by going back to Jumeirah’s most important asset: people. “To continue to achieve all this, we need to ensure continuous education of our colleagues, to make sure that when people come here, they are served well.”