Rotana to invest $750mn in 2012 MEA pipeline

Posted by: essam bahri
8 Jan 2012
I always read statements from the CEO of Rotana, I am a kind of fan of his personality same as of few others. I have a question which was never answered, "why Rotana is also know as Lebanana" well pople have given this name since they believe Lebanese are given preferance for employment in Rotana particularly for senior appointments and we can actually see that Lebanese ratio is much higher than any other nationality at Rotana. Since the CEO or Owners are from Lebanon so they want to fill Rotana with whole Lebanon? Or may be others nationalities are not competitive in skills like Lebanese! May be Mr Salim will have an answer to that, what we are talking about is Senior Appointments, apart from recent trend of Turkish appointments in bulk.

Posted by: Selim El Zyr
10 Jan 2012
Dear Essam, Thank you for your comment. Perhaps the reason why this question was never raised is because it is a known fact that recruitment in our company is done based on the capabilities and talent of candidates rather than the nationality. For us, it is important to source new hires with the required skills, experiences and competencies set. At corporate level, the selection and retention of the best qualified individuals is central to the long term vision of our company. Just to give you an idea, we have six Lebanese Senior Executives at corporate office and the remaining nineteen are British, Germans, Jordanians, Syrians, Polish, Greek and Indian and so on http://www.rotana.com/aboutrotana/corporateexecutives. Having said that, I must mention that all reputable colleges and universities in Lebanon offer a hospitality degree, and this is not the case in many other countries within the region. Furthermore, if you check with major hospitality universities across the world, they will advise you that the majority of the Arab students are Lebanese and you can refer to Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne as an example. Therefore, Lebanese do not have their fair share of employment at Rotana. As for the properties, looking in the past, the main working population within the hospitality industry were employees from India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, in addition to the nationalities listed above. Nowadays, you will find in our large properties up to 70 different nationalities working and I believe that this kind of diversity makes our company and properties very vibrant. Thank you, Selim El Zyr

Posted by: essam bahri
10 Jan 2012
Mr. Selim, I am truly glad to see your detailed reply, in fact many others would not care to do so. I understand as you stated above. Just for information, I happened to meet a couple of hoteliers from Bangladesh, Sirilanka, Pakistan & China they were also educated from well reputed hotel schools probably in London & USA but they were been discriminated on several occasions due to the nationality. How does it sound; if someone is called for an interview for the listed/advertised role, and after knowing his nationality no more question is further asked and is simply replied that we do not have any position vacant. I am not actually blaming you, and also understand as you might not have enough time to reply every post here but these issue must be cared by our senior executives. I was personally surprised to see some bad comments about Rotana on E-hotelier.com where Rotana was named as discriminitaing company together with Jumeirah group. There is definitely something wrong at some level which we some times are not aware of being on the very senior role. Why Marriott, Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons are never named under this category. Well, Thanks again for your time to reply here, and I wish to meet with you in near future. Regards, Essam

Posted by: Rotana Employee
7 May 2012
Dear Essam Its totaly wrong what you mentioned above ,go to every rotana hotels and you can see that the lebanese people are not more then 5 staffs and the indian for example or egyptian are not less then 20 !!! Thanks