A truly Mediterranean proposition
Entrepreneurship
Tony Potter remembers the first time that he walked into the Corinthia Palace in Attard as a student. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled with awe.
He recently walked in again years later as the chief executive officer of Corinthia Hotels International (CHI), which manages Corinthia hotels, and was pleased to note that it still had the same impact on him.
"The hotel was in need of refurbishment, which we are now undertaking, but it is still an absolutely unique hotel, with fabulous grounds and that lovely villa," he said.
"This is what the Corinthia brand is all about."
Indeed, Mr Potter knows exactly what it takes for a hotel to be a Corinthia and he is determined to protect this brand in spite of the company's rapidly expanding portfolio.
Luckily, CHI has got more brands to play with thanks to the purchase of 30 per cent of its shares by Wyndham, which brought with it the Wyndham brand and the Ramada brands. It says a lot for the homegrown brand that Corinthia was chosen to be the five-star deluxe brand.
"The Wyndham deal was very important because it allowed CHI to grow with more brands as a management company and also because Corinthia itself had come a long way and it was time to position the Corinthia brand of hotels in its own right.
"We evaluated all the properties that carry the Corinthia name (which are owned by CHI's majority shareholder International Hotel Investments) and, seeing how developments such as the Royal in Budapest had gone, we decided that the Corinthia brand should be five-star deluxe. We will soon launch our new livery and our new brochure is ready," he said.
The exercise looked at all the IHI properties. For example, it was decided that the Corinthia Panorama in Prague will be rebranded as the Ramada Hotel Prague, the Aquincum in Budapest will be the Ramada Plaza Budapest and the Gammarth Corinthia in Tunis will be the Ramada Plaza Tunis.
This is in line with Mr Potter's belief that it is best not be overexposed. "If you look at the really top brands they rarely have more than one hotel in any place. And the hotels are not too big because the market for five-star luxury is only of a certain size. You don't want to mix your customers and mix your rates..." he said.
"So in the case of Prague and Budapest it makes it much easier for CHI to run two properties if they have different brands. So the business meeting requirement is satisfied by the Ramada Plaza while the international conference requirement is satisfied by the Corinthia.
"To give another example, right now in North Africa we have a very exciting project on a very large piece of land. We evaluated it and decided that we could actually have three separate and distrinct brands on it, all under one management, perhaps a Ramada, a Wyndham and a Corinthia."
There is no signed contract yet on the recently acquired Metropole Hotel building in London but CHI is clearly expecting finalisation soon.
"We have always worked very closely with IHI (which owns the London hotel with Istithmar Hotels FZE of Dubai and the Libyan Foreign Investment Co. as a joint venture) and advise them on hotel matters. Obviously, at some stage in the near future, they will be looking at the precise way in which the hotel will be run. But we still need to sort out some details," he said.
Of course, the decision is not always as clear cut. For example, the Corinthia Marina Hotel will be rebranded as the Marina Hotel at the Corinthia Beach Resort in Malta while the Corinthia San ?or? will be repositioned as a five-star de luxe.
"The Marina Hotel has equally high service and the best watersports on the island but the brand is clearly different. The beauty is that all the facilities are shared as a resort and the new general manager will actually run both properties and all the facilities," he said.
This means that the company is left with the Corinthia Palace in Attard as its only other property in Malta, both Mistra and the Jerma having been closed down.
"I would love to have another hotel in Malta but as I said, we do not want the Corinthia brand to be overexposed. The solution may be to use the Wyndham Grand Collection when fully launched, which is not so much of a brand as an umbrella for luxury hotels. This allows us to run an individual hotel as part of a Wydham Grand Collection, operated by Corinthia Hotels International as well as one of our core brands of Wyndham or Corinthia. That makes the world so much larger for us.
"The problem with brands is that their strength comes from consistency. That makes it expensive and difficult for some owners as there might be lovely hotels that cannot be Corinthia's because they have old-fashioned lifts or other details that are all wrong, for example. But there is no reason why Corinthia could not run a hotel as part of the Wyndham Grand collection. This might be interesting for Malta..."
CHI currently has 16 hotels under management and the target is to have 65 hotels by 2015. Mr Potter said that the company is on track, signing about eight hotels a year through the efforts of development director Paul Pisani. This year it will take over hotels in Dubai and Egypt, and it has signed memorandums of understanding or contracts with hotels in Algeria, Morocco, Romania, Sharm el Sheikh, Abu Dhabi and Liverpool.
"There is so much activity. We just recruited someone else in the development team and there is room for one other person," he said. The Corinthia brand was taken out of Malta quite systematically in ever growing circles, to North Africa and Central and Eastern European countries, to Portugal and eventually south to The Gambia and Khartoum. Now it is moving eastwards to the Middle East. How far will it go?
Mr Potter stressed that the work in Europe was far from over.
"We still need to concentrate on key gateways within the area you mentioned. We have to go into Paris, Berlin, Rome and so on. The challenge is to find the right properties in these locations. We have to be very disciplined," he said.
But CHI is looking further afield. America is an obvious choice for a Corinthia Hotel, given the strength of the Wyndham brand there, and CHI has so far found one possible contender in New York, although things are at an early stage. It will also seriously consider Los Angeles and Miami.
Asia might be a bit more difficult for Corinthia to penetrate, he admitted, but the Wyndham and Ramada names are well known there. He also said that there were wonderful opportunities in India, as there were many hotels there that wanted to join forces with European organisations.
"It might be easier for us to get in there than in Asia. It is a question of resources at the moment. It is very important that we can operate the hotels that we take over.
"We cannot recruit new Corinthia managers from big branded hotels because our approach is different. We want entrepreneurs, people with a strong personality, people who will put their stamp on the customer experience at the hotel.
"This is why we needed a human resources department that could identify people within the organisation, recruit them and develop them. You know, we call the department our 'talent department' and we use the word 'coaching' instead of training. Then it gets exciting because you can recruit for attitude not technical skills," he said.
Another area CHI is very interested in is Russia. This year it is finalising the renovation and extension of Nevskiy Palace in St Petersburg and once the ballroom is finished, it will be the largest banqueting operation in a hotel in the whole of Russia.
"Luckily we are well known there as everyone knows the hotel in St Petersburg. This will help us when we try to find the right properties in Moscow and other emerging Russian cities," he said.
But CHI is not only looking at more and more hotels. It is also trying to add to the customer experience and one way in which it is doing this is by setting up its own spa company, an effort being spearheaded by Shaun Pisani, the newly appointed director of products and services throughout the hotel group. This will enable it to operate its own spas and to offer its own spa services to potential owners.
"In the Corinthia brand, the leisure side is moving away from groups and tour operators, albeit not entirely. There are a lot more individuals who want a good hotel experience who also want to enjoy some spa treatments. So we are trying to replace the two-day break with a four-day break with spa.
"Apart from training our spa staff, we are also creating range based on Maltese products like herbs. This is all part of creating a Mediterranean brand," he said.
"We are determined that wherever we operate a Corinthia hotel around the world, the brand will be unique and offer a true sense of the flavours, colours and feelings of Malta. This, combined with the original vision of Corinthia Hotels founder Alfred Pisani, makes the Corinthia brand a truly special and original story that can take its place in the history and future of the global hotel and hospitality industry."
He recently walked in again years later as the chief executive officer of Corinthia Hotels International (CHI), which manages Corinthia hotels, and was pleased to note that it still had the same impact on him.
"The hotel was in need of refurbishment, which we are now undertaking, but it is still an absolutely unique hotel, with fabulous grounds and that lovely villa," he said.
"This is what the Corinthia brand is all about."
Indeed, Mr Potter knows exactly what it takes for a hotel to be a Corinthia and he is determined to protect this brand in spite of the company's rapidly expanding portfolio.
Luckily, CHI has got more brands to play with thanks to the purchase of 30 per cent of its shares by Wyndham, which brought with it the Wyndham brand and the Ramada brands. It says a lot for the homegrown brand that Corinthia was chosen to be the five-star deluxe brand.
"The Wyndham deal was very important because it allowed CHI to grow with more brands as a management company and also because Corinthia itself had come a long way and it was time to position the Corinthia brand of hotels in its own right.
"We evaluated all the properties that carry the Corinthia name (which are owned by CHI's majority shareholder International Hotel Investments) and, seeing how developments such as the Royal in Budapest had gone, we decided that the Corinthia brand should be five-star deluxe. We will soon launch our new livery and our new brochure is ready," he said.
The exercise looked at all the IHI properties. For example, it was decided that the Corinthia Panorama in Prague will be rebranded as the Ramada Hotel Prague, the Aquincum in Budapest will be the Ramada Plaza Budapest and the Gammarth Corinthia in Tunis will be the Ramada Plaza Tunis.
This is in line with Mr Potter's belief that it is best not be overexposed. "If you look at the really top brands they rarely have more than one hotel in any place. And the hotels are not too big because the market for five-star luxury is only of a certain size. You don't want to mix your customers and mix your rates..." he said.
"So in the case of Prague and Budapest it makes it much easier for CHI to run two properties if they have different brands. So the business meeting requirement is satisfied by the Ramada Plaza while the international conference requirement is satisfied by the Corinthia.
"To give another example, right now in North Africa we have a very exciting project on a very large piece of land. We evaluated it and decided that we could actually have three separate and distrinct brands on it, all under one management, perhaps a Ramada, a Wyndham and a Corinthia."
There is no signed contract yet on the recently acquired Metropole Hotel building in London but CHI is clearly expecting finalisation soon.
"We have always worked very closely with IHI (which owns the London hotel with Istithmar Hotels FZE of Dubai and the Libyan Foreign Investment Co. as a joint venture) and advise them on hotel matters. Obviously, at some stage in the near future, they will be looking at the precise way in which the hotel will be run. But we still need to sort out some details," he said.
Of course, the decision is not always as clear cut. For example, the Corinthia Marina Hotel will be rebranded as the Marina Hotel at the Corinthia Beach Resort in Malta while the Corinthia San ?or? will be repositioned as a five-star de luxe.
"The Marina Hotel has equally high service and the best watersports on the island but the brand is clearly different. The beauty is that all the facilities are shared as a resort and the new general manager will actually run both properties and all the facilities," he said.
This means that the company is left with the Corinthia Palace in Attard as its only other property in Malta, both Mistra and the Jerma having been closed down.
"I would love to have another hotel in Malta but as I said, we do not want the Corinthia brand to be overexposed. The solution may be to use the Wyndham Grand Collection when fully launched, which is not so much of a brand as an umbrella for luxury hotels. This allows us to run an individual hotel as part of a Wydham Grand Collection, operated by Corinthia Hotels International as well as one of our core brands of Wyndham or Corinthia. That makes the world so much larger for us.
"The problem with brands is that their strength comes from consistency. That makes it expensive and difficult for some owners as there might be lovely hotels that cannot be Corinthia's because they have old-fashioned lifts or other details that are all wrong, for example. But there is no reason why Corinthia could not run a hotel as part of the Wyndham Grand collection. This might be interesting for Malta..."
CHI currently has 16 hotels under management and the target is to have 65 hotels by 2015. Mr Potter said that the company is on track, signing about eight hotels a year through the efforts of development director Paul Pisani. This year it will take over hotels in Dubai and Egypt, and it has signed memorandums of understanding or contracts with hotels in Algeria, Morocco, Romania, Sharm el Sheikh, Abu Dhabi and Liverpool.
"There is so much activity. We just recruited someone else in the development team and there is room for one other person," he said. The Corinthia brand was taken out of Malta quite systematically in ever growing circles, to North Africa and Central and Eastern European countries, to Portugal and eventually south to The Gambia and Khartoum. Now it is moving eastwards to the Middle East. How far will it go?
Mr Potter stressed that the work in Europe was far from over.
"We still need to concentrate on key gateways within the area you mentioned. We have to go into Paris, Berlin, Rome and so on. The challenge is to find the right properties in these locations. We have to be very disciplined," he said.
But CHI is looking further afield. America is an obvious choice for a Corinthia Hotel, given the strength of the Wyndham brand there, and CHI has so far found one possible contender in New York, although things are at an early stage. It will also seriously consider Los Angeles and Miami.
Asia might be a bit more difficult for Corinthia to penetrate, he admitted, but the Wyndham and Ramada names are well known there. He also said that there were wonderful opportunities in India, as there were many hotels there that wanted to join forces with European organisations.
"It might be easier for us to get in there than in Asia. It is a question of resources at the moment. It is very important that we can operate the hotels that we take over.
"We cannot recruit new Corinthia managers from big branded hotels because our approach is different. We want entrepreneurs, people with a strong personality, people who will put their stamp on the customer experience at the hotel.
"This is why we needed a human resources department that could identify people within the organisation, recruit them and develop them. You know, we call the department our 'talent department' and we use the word 'coaching' instead of training. Then it gets exciting because you can recruit for attitude not technical skills," he said.
Another area CHI is very interested in is Russia. This year it is finalising the renovation and extension of Nevskiy Palace in St Petersburg and once the ballroom is finished, it will be the largest banqueting operation in a hotel in the whole of Russia.
"Luckily we are well known there as everyone knows the hotel in St Petersburg. This will help us when we try to find the right properties in Moscow and other emerging Russian cities," he said.
But CHI is not only looking at more and more hotels. It is also trying to add to the customer experience and one way in which it is doing this is by setting up its own spa company, an effort being spearheaded by Shaun Pisani, the newly appointed director of products and services throughout the hotel group. This will enable it to operate its own spas and to offer its own spa services to potential owners.
"In the Corinthia brand, the leisure side is moving away from groups and tour operators, albeit not entirely. There are a lot more individuals who want a good hotel experience who also want to enjoy some spa treatments. So we are trying to replace the two-day break with a four-day break with spa.
"Apart from training our spa staff, we are also creating range based on Maltese products like herbs. This is all part of creating a Mediterranean brand," he said.
"We are determined that wherever we operate a Corinthia hotel around the world, the brand will be unique and offer a true sense of the flavours, colours and feelings of Malta. This, combined with the original vision of Corinthia Hotels founder Alfred Pisani, makes the Corinthia brand a truly special and original story that can take its place in the history and future of the global hotel and hospitality industry."