Cuttingly contemporary

Jesper Godsk
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Do you think we’ll see more and more hotels like this? Is the market moving in this direction, or is it generally still quite conservative?

I think investors really need to consider their target group and not think that they can do everything. There are so many nice rooms on the market now so it’s very difficult to come up with a completely new room concept. You need more than just a good room, you have to have the whole package, which means the lobby, the people and the service. Restaurants and bars have also become a major factor, I think. And location, of course. Even though they are doing their best to make the traffic better, people still select what part of town they want to stay in very carefully, and each part of town has space for a similar kind of hotel to this.

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What are the key ingredients of a successful hotel?

You have to have a good operator and an owner who knows what they want – and can stay loyal to that.

If you have that, you’ll be fine. We do a lot of restaurants; we’ve created over 100 bars and restaurants over the last ten years.

We know a lot about food and how to get a restaurant to work. We have made our mistakes as well, but I think design is only one third of the product – you have to have the food, and you have to have the concept.

A good example is Okku, which is a very successful venue with extremely good operators. They are very good at marketing themselves. They have been loyal to the concept of drinks, then food, then drinks again. They have a real long-term vision. It has been a very expensive journey for them but they are definitely getting it right. There are a lot of new places where you have operators from outside coming in and making an independent investment.

This has also changed the market. The benchmark, even just five years ago, was Buddha Bar, and there wasn’t really any competition at the time because bars and restaurants were still being run by the hotels themselves. And then, suddenly, this new entity came into the market.

Independent investors are more likely to push for the extra revenue because investment is not linked to a larger hotel, where the restaurant is only a small part of it.

With independent operators, the outlet is the whole investment. As a result, you will sometime see a very different level of commitment from these independent investors.

What else are you currently working on?

We have an architecture practice as well, so in terms of architecture, we are working on an Ibis and Novotel in Syria. We also have a beach resort, which is quite trendy, in Syria. We have the Centro roll-out, which is ongoing – we now have two Centros coming up in Syria and one in Beirut. When it comes to interiors, by summer we are going to open a new Gary Rhodes restaurant in Dubai; and by the beginning of next year we are of course going to open Grosvenor House II, which is going to be big, and will have some big names for restaurants and outlets.

What is the Syrian market like? How open are they to modern design?

It’s quite surprising. Our project there will be quite contemporary, with open bathrooms and a very design-orientated approach. It’s a new Rotana. We have worked on a lot of projects with Rotana over the years and they are one of the operators that we really enjoy working with. They are very receptive to new ideas.

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