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.”
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