Opening hotels is dynamic; the knowledge you need is very different and it comes along with a unique set of responsibilities.
Operating a hotel is creative. You work with different people, ranging from guests to the owners. But when you’re opening, it’s a different game. You work with people from all walks of life, who think very differently from hospitality professionals and that is something hoteliers love. You deal with engineers, project managers and government officials.
Working with luxury hotels provides greater flexibility, especially considering the evolving definition of “luxury” in recent years. Luxury lies in the details. It involves personalizing services. When opening a hotel, you’re essentially tailoring the experience, not just for guests but also for owners.
Getting it right requires the services of an asset manager who fully understands the goals of the hotel for both operator and owner.
When it comes to hotels, having a seasoned asset manager is like having a secret weapon that lasts beyond the grand opening. Asset managers provide a critical bridge gap between development dreams and practical success, urging developers to think beyond the pretty stuff.
Sure, it’s tempting to focus on the aesthetics, but asset managers are here to push for the real talk. Do you have enough space for a full house? Is the ballroom a yay or nay? And seriously, are there enough public bathrooms? Asset managers challenge developers to put themselves in guests’ shoes, shaping the project with both the customer experience and business sense in mind.
Well-being has also become a vital element in the luxury experience.
Guests want to experience the world. They want to come to a hotel and leave the hotel better than when they came. Luxury is not turndown service, nor 800-thread sheets in your bed.
Luxury also derives from the successful linking of owners and operators.
Asset managers are the glue that brings all the hotel teams together, and we can never emphasize enough on the need for constant communication. Are development and operating teams not talking? That’s a recipe for disaster. Daily chats are necessary to keep everything in sync.
Add managing employees to that heady mix. It's about the team that you have as well as the community around the hotel.
Despite only opening last October, the JW Marriott Hotel Muscat in Oman has been rated No. 1 in guest satisfaction in the region.
The people in Oman are genuine, they care for each other and there is a sense of family that is not seen in any other country. What the JW Marriott Hotel Muscat team has achieved is remarkable, and the employees have only known each other for a couple of months. If you walk around, the atmosphere feels like these team members have been together forever. And that’s what makes a hotel.
Before moving to Oman, I opened a hotel in the Maldives, and that’s where I truly discovered my passion for the industry. I started my hospitality career on cruise ships before transitioning into hotels. I have lived in seven different countries. I met my husband in China. It was in the Maldives that I came to the realization that this is what I want to do.
I was particularly drawn to the JW Marriott Hotel Muscat because it was a reopening, which is something I haven’t done before. The tight timelines gave me a thrill, and in three months, we had to take care of everything, from setting up all the spaces to hiring an entire team. We are also taking the hotel in a new direction as the first urban resort in Muscat.
That, to labor the point, requires the right support.
It takes a village to open a hotel so quickly, and we had a lot of assistance from our asset manager and the team, who were able to align all the different stakeholders involved in the opening and keep the timeline of the project moving smoothly.
It all comes down to one thing: communication, communication, communication. That’s the secret sauce to building not just a hotel but a cool, profitable and functional one, too.
Juliana Salla-Bruines is general manager at the JW Marriott Hotel Muscat, Oman. Lionel Anidjar is hotels project director at Global Asset Solutions.
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