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ST REGIS, Starwood Hotels and Resorts’ luxury brand is all set to launch its first hotel in the Middle East on Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, in November.
It will be followed by five additional openings across the region including Doha, Dubai and Amman as part of Starwood’s global expansion plans to launch 25 new hotels by 2015.
PAUL JAMES, global brand leader of The Luxury Collection and St Regis Hotels & Resorts spoke to TTN.
What’s the difference between a St Regis and a Luxury Collection hotel?
The St Regis is a classic luxury brand, with key characteristics that you will find in every single hotel. So, while each property has its own individual character in terms of design, there are certain elements that let you recognise the commonality. It could be the library, the art or the jazz playing in our lobby. On the service side, you have the St Regis butler service across all our St Regis properties, delivering an individual service style to our brand.
The Luxury Collection on the other hand, is a collection of unique luxury hotels, each with their own story to tell. The property boasts an independent spirit and identity and collectively they come together to create something much bigger and stronger as a group.
We also think about the value from a consumer perspective, of the insight, knowledge and access that we have because of the assembly of these great hotels we’ve had for almost 100 years. We believe that has made us a destination authority because our guests trust us to give them access to various insights relating to their personal passions and interests in each of these cities. The Al Maha Resort here is a great example of that, where you can really understand the real story behind the city.
Is value still a key aspect for the luxury traveller?
Value is a complicated aspect. For every guest today time is extremely constrained. So we need to do everything right the first time and make sure we repeat that. We have an incredibly high loyalty rate at our St Regis hotels, because we know our customers, what they like and how they want to be looked after. This is a process handled by our butler service whose members look after your personal needs and preferences allowing us to use that facility to give you more time to focus on what is important to you. That seamless, uncompromising quality of service all the time, but also finding ways to give you a stress-free stay, is what makes us unique and represents true value.
What will be the unique features at the St Regis Saadiyat?
The brand consistency will be a key feature, from the design side, our butler service or the legendary afternoon tea service but each expressed in different ways because Saadiyat is a beach resort and caters to your leisure time as compared to the property on the Corniche, which is much more commercial.
How have the brands performed over the last two years?
It is not unusual that in any global recession, occupancies of luxury hotels are the first to fall, but also the first to recover. In our key cities, we were witnessing healthy occupancies by the end of 2009. Asia was much quicker and we’ve seen that occupancies are already building in this region, so the long-term economics are strong and we are confident of the region.
Our Middle Eastern guests are exceptionally aware of St Regis as a luxury brand today. Some of our most loyal customers are particularly from the UAE and Qatar, travelling to Rome, London, New York and more recently to Singapore. We are a brand that launched in 1999-2000, with two resorts in Aspen, Colorado followed by properties in Beijing, Rome and London. We used that base to establish the brand identity and only then started to identify new cities we wanted to take the brand to.
How do you plan to position the brand in a location that will also house other niche five-star properties?
Our customers will make sure we are positioned well in the market and not just beside competition. We have the advantage of being among the first hotels to open and will be part of the story of Saadiyat as it evolves over the next couple of years. Our particular style of service, the intimacy and the style of the hotel will be the key element that will establish the difference. We have a clear understanding of today’s global traveller who knows their contemporary form of luxury. I think our job is to make sure they are comfortable when they come to us and that will be our contribution to the success of Saadiyat Island.
The second St Regis Abu Dhabi will be located on the Corniche in downtown Abu Dhabi – why the choice of a second property in the city as opposed to another emirate?
When you are looking to develop hotels, it’s about the right project, with the right partner in the right city and very rarely do you get two pristine opportunities that are so close to each other. The great thing about these two properties is that they are complementary. The St Regis Abu Dhabi on the Corniche is much more commercial and social in its outlook and will cater to those guests while Saadiyat is a resort, so guests will stay longer and our butlers will facilitate their time between golf and the beach rather than from one meeting to another.
They are both world-class hotels, just described in two different ways. We believe we’ve been very lucky with the opportunity and in a market we have wanted to be in for several years. There are a lot of high-end customers coming in and out of the Middle East which we can benefit from as a company.