LONDON and HONG KONG—After 57 years in business, Hong Kong-based Harilela Group has gained enough market experience and is ready to launch its first brand.
Harilela—which was established in 1959 and is still privately owned—owns 13 assets and operates two additional properties, with locations in the Far East, including Hong Kong, China and Thailand; as well as Europe and Canada. The company also has two properties in its pipeline, one of which will open in New York City under the Joie de Vivre brand and will be developed with Commune Hotels and Resorts.
Now Harilela is launching The Hari brand, and its first property—the 85-room The Hari London—will open on 31 August in London’s Belgravia district. The property is a conversion of Belgraves, which was previously operated by Commune as a Thompson Hotels brand. A second Hari is scheduled to open in 2019 in the Wan Chai area of Hong Kong.
Preferred Hotels & Resorts’ Lifestyle Collection will market and support the fledgling brand.
Harilela’s Chairman and CEO Aron Harilela came up with the idea for the brand and decided to name it after his father, Hari Harilela, who founded the company. The group also has health care and food-and-beverage divisions and two managed hotels, both of which are under the Ambassador Hotel brand at Singapore’s Changi Airport.
All in the family
Family values run deep in Harilela and its new brand, according to Andrew Coney, GM at The Hari London. Coney also was GM at Belgraves, and the transition underlines the still very cordial relationship between Harilela and Commune.
Coney described the Harilela family, which was in the tailoring business before hospitality, as “extremely close,” and those close family ties might explain why the company’s first brand took so long to develop.
“Initially, it was the safe option to be aligned with a traditional brand,” Coney said, “but as time evolved and our CEO traveled extensively, he had more appetite to offer an independent experience, a light brand for customers that value uniqueness and discovery.”
But now, the rest of the Harilela family has experience to match, Coney said, citing the 621-room Holiday Inn Golden Mile Hong Kong, which the company counts as one of its assets. He added that rolling out the new brand now made the most sense for Harilela Group.
“(CEO Aron Harilela) has been thinking about this move for several years, and work began in a low-key manner a year ago,” Coney said, who added he has learned that it is a bigger task to rebrand a hotel than it is to open one, now that he has experience of doing both.
For almost 60 years, Harilela has only operated franchises and management contracts, but today it has a culture of more flexibility, Coney said.
“Harilela has a forward-thinking outlook backed up by decades of experience and wisdom,” he said.
Focusing on uniqueness, neighborhood
Launching The Hari London also came at the right time for the Belgraves property, too, Coney said.
“I am still operating a hotel, marketing and driving a business, but now there needs to be a new focus on the new hotel and the story it has to tell,” Coney said. “The contract on the hotel with Commune and Thompson had run out, and the time was right to start its new direction.”
Coney and Harilela have a strong sense of what The Hari will be, and what it will not.
“Some brand rules have to be applied, but integrity is key, and scale only becomes a problem when you lose that uniqueness that customers assign to you,” Coney said. “Hospitality for Harilela is not about huge physical elements but about heart and soul. Standardized service is a thing of the past. Being giving and passionate is what now is important in the hotel industry, and having insightfulness, and to have a hint of eccentricity and playfulness. It cannot be too formulaic. You want your guests to say of you, ‘That’s clever, that’s fun.’”
Maintaining that uniqueness is something Coney expects of his staff, and employees are expected to know the property’s Belgravia neighborhood inside and out, both as a courtesy and as a selling point. For example, actress Judy Garland once lived across the street and just around the corner Victorian author Mary Shelley wrote the novel “Frankenstein.”
Coney also said the hotel’s bar and restaurant is a local hub in the neighborhood.
“Mayfair is the best part of London, with almost a village mentality,” Coney said. “It is passionate, very discerning and hugely affluent.”
Coney said a lot is riding on the success of the London property.
The hotel and other brands and independents are “all vying for the same things, the emerging markets, which London is for China,” Coney said, who added the new hotel chain’s website will be translated into Mandarin, Arabic and Russian.