NAHED SAMIR has recently been promoted to vice president operations and business development Midde East with the Sonesta Collection. TTN caught up with her for a chat about her new role and the comepany’s future plans.
What was your previous role?
I started with Sonesta in 1996 as regional director of sales then got promoted to regional director of sales and marketing, then vice president for business development looking after the sales and marketing, revenue management, communications and media relations, brand standards and project management.
I understand you have been involved in opening some of the Sonesta properties, which ones and are there any new ones coming up?
I was involved in opening several hotels and ships first the Sonesta St George Hotel Luxor, the Sonesta Moon Goddess Nile cruiser, Sonesta Club Sharm, Sonesta Taba, Sonesta St George 1 Nile cruiser, Sonesta Star Goddess, Sonesta Beach Resort Hurghada and the Sonesta Le Royale Sharm.
The company is looking forward to further expansion in the region. In September 2012 we will be opening Sonesta Hotel Doha, a five-star property with 166 rooms and suites, convention space and a selection of food and beverage outlets.
There are also two new Nile cruise ships and the 450-room Sonesta Kiroseiz Beach Resort, Dahab, in the pipeline which will bring the total to 16 managed properties in Egypt.
What are your plans for your new position are there any particular areas you are looking to work on?
We’re always looking for ways to add value for our customers and I will be working alongside the general managers and staff of our hotels and ships to offer overall operational support.
One of Sonesta’s core values is the respect for our staff as individuals and working together to improve the work environment as part of the Sonesta ‘culture of caring’.
If you have specific promotional plans how will you execute these?
We set up our local and international promotional plans yearly according to the various events, seasonal and market trends. Of course we make modifications to such plans during the year whenever a change happens in the market place. We still are running our summer promotional campaign, which went very well in generating unexpected revenue, better than expected. Next month we will be lunching a new campaign ‘Your wedding in Egypt’ which will be promoted through different channels including the wedding and social events page at Sonesta.com.
How will you go about attracting visitors back to the properties in light of the ongoing tensions?
We have the ‘Open for Business’ campaign, which our CEO Stephanie Sonnabend highlighted with TTN back in May. It’s directed at both consumers and travel agents and has been running in publications in both the Middle East and Europe and we are certainly seeing business picking up slowly with things starting to return to normal.
The initial travel agent response was one of concern but that quickly turned to being very supportive of Egyptian tourism and the Egyptian government has also gone on record as to the importance of tourism for the country’s economy and the opportunities that are available in the new Egypt.
We’ve also been marketing directly to previous guests, which has been successful as they know to expect a good experience with Sonesta.
What makes the company special in a country with so much to offer?
Our hotels and cruise ships are in some of the world’s most spectacular destinations and we work hard to make each special and different, though always with the Sonesta promise of service and quality.
The family-run company has been operating upscale properties for more than 60 years and today is headed by the third generation of the Sonnabend family.
That kind of history contributes to the other factor which goes to make Sonesta special which is the exceptional level of staff loyalty – in fact most of our senior executives have been with the company for more than 10 years.