Bonnington’s Martin Kubler and Alan Bostock explain why the family-owned company’s first five-star hotel is Dubai’s biggest secret and the group’s most notable achievement to date
What is the Bonnington Group’s hotel philosophy and how is that apparent at Bonnington Jumeirah Lakes Towers?
Alan Bostock: We are a family company and all our hotels in UK and Ireland have got this personal touch, which is what we are trying to create over here. This is the first five-star hotel of the group. We wanted to focus on a boutique feel.
Martin Kubler: So far, Bonnington has never really done branded hotels; they are all individual properties. And they all have their own identity and their own charm.
What brings it together for guests as well as employees is when you are in one of our properties, you become one of the family. It is very visible, I think, in the way we interact with our employees, the way we interact with our guests.
The service attitude that we try to instill is that if a guest walks into one of our properties, he or she should be made welcome in the sense that they become part of the Bonnington family during their stay with us.
And in the UK and Ireland we have an extremely good track record of retaining staff for 10, 20, 30 years at a time. And we also have a very high percentage of return guests. We’re trying to bring that over here and give it that extra edge for the five-star surroundings.
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Why was Dubai the first location for the group outside of the British Isles?
AB: Going back to 2003/2004, there was tremendous potential at that time. There was the opportunity for overseas investment and ownership with the introduction of free zones; it was attractive from that point of view. We own and operate our hotels, which is probably another unique selling point.
MK: I think this is the first 100% owned and operated British hotel in Dubai. We own the land, we own the building, all our own money has gone into this building, there is no local partner.
Why did Bonnington expand into the five-star segment for this property?
AB: Our properties in the UK are good four-star and I think five-star is the level to be at here. It’s the right level for this part of the world.
MK: Also, the area here really needed a five-star hotel. Jumeirah Lakes Towers (JLT) is a very important future commercial centre in Dubai.
How did you develop the concept for Bonnington Jumeirah Lakes Towers?
MK: Our other properties have their identity already; this one we needed to create from scratch.
What we’ve come up with is essentially a very British, handcrafted hospitality concept. We’ve tried to deliver a very clean, very modern property that still retains key British features. You take the Authors Lounge as an example; it has a fairly modern look to it yet you have Shakespeare on the wall and there will be a library there in a couple of weeks’ time.
The rooms are very modern, sleek and user friendly, but, for example, your teapot reminds you of British afternoon tea, so there are these signature elements in all the areas that we tried to incorporate to show our heritage and tradition.
So few things over here have history, but we actually do and this was part of the whole learning process — we came over here and we didn’t really realise how important our history is to the local market over here. The Bonnington as a company has received a coat of arms in the UK, which we also brought over here and it turned out that this was actually more of a selling point than a lot of other things. The hotel has 40 storeys but it retains a boutique feel.
It will appeal to people who want to stay in five-star hotels, but want to be treated as an individual. What we’re trying to do is to bring a European service attitude to Dubai that pulls right through from the rank and file to the management.
AB: Our focus in all our hotels is towards the corporate client as opposed to the leisure and JLT is obviously a corporate destination rather than a leisure destination.
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