Hotelier Awards shortlist: Team of the Year

The Hotel Team of the Year is a new category for the Hotelier Middle East Awards 2010, and is designed to celebrate the team behind a property’s success.

The nomination process for this category was particularly rigorous, with hotels having to provide facts and figures about the achievements of their many teams, including F&B, sales and marketing and events, engineering, housekeeping, finance and revenue management and front of house.

As a result, the five shortlisted teams richly deserve their places and are all fantastic representatives of the calibre of hotels in the region.

And the finalists are:

Media One Hotel, Dubai
The mission statement for the staff, called ‘enthusiasts’, is ‘go beyond’ which was initiated to establish an unconventional atmosphere in the hotel, with the aim to strive to go beyond the ordinary, the conventional, the usual and the routine to make a big difference to the guest’s experience during their stay at Media One: and we have succeeded. The whole team actively practises our hotel ‘values’ to support the mission statement, which are PERFECT — personalised, enthusiastic, respectful, fun, empowering, committed and transparent — with both internal and external customers, making us a great team to work with, and stay with! We all have a sense of independence and responsibility that encourages an environment of continuous improvement. This is an amazing achievement for the team of a brand new, independent hotel.

Park Rotana Abu Dhabi
The team of Park Rotana Abu Dhabi has put tremendous efforts, hard work and dedication into making the opening of the property within 6 months period a true sucess story. Each member of our team not only did what required to meet high levels of opening standards but went an extra mile to overcome challenges and deliver required results on time. As a result, the team spirit and motivation did allow Park Rotana to arrive where we are now, to achieve and maintain the outstanding levels of industry standards - an achievement which truly deserves such recognition as Hotelier Middle East Awards.

The Westin Dubai and Le Meridien Mina Seyahi, Dubai
The Mina Seyahi Associates are called the Mina Seyahi Family. Together we believe that "small details make a difference" and we strive to be "world class". Having opened the first Westin Hotel in the middle east 2 years ago, we have been challenged with a new opening as well as operating one of the oldest 5 star hotels on Jumeirah Beach- Le Meridien Mina Seyahi. Along with operating the busiest bar in Dubai- Barasti, the complex is well known amongst the local community. As a team, we believe that we have grown from strength to strength and have overcome many challenges in the past 2 years as well as having many success stories to share. We celebrate the success of our Associates and believe that they are the most important assett a hotel can have.

Jumeirah Beach Hotel
The Management team at Jumeirah Beach Hotel are the principle stakeholders within the hotel and it is through their influence that they have inspired a remarkable set of inspirational and aspirational standards within their teams and department. We have worked tirelessly in keeping the engagement levels of our colleagues high and sustaining healthy business levels since the start of the financial crisis.

Al Manzil Hotel, Dubai
Just four short years since it first opened its doors in the emirate's highly competitive hospitality market, Al Manzil Hotel has emerged as one of the most popular hotels in Dubai – rated No 1 out of 392 Dubai hotels on TripAdvisor’s Business Index, and No 4 out of 392 Dubai hotels on TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index (as of August 22, 2010). Since opening in 2007, Al Manzil Hotel has enjoyed occupancy rates in the high 80s, and an impressive rate of return guests (30%), an achievement mainly credited to its warm and efficient team of hotel professionals, drawn from over 20 different nationalities.

The winners will be announced at the Hotelier Middle East Awards, which will be held on October 14 at Madinat Jumeirah Resort.