Man Four all Seasons

Running a hotel is all about timing. Get that right and you have thousands of not only satisfied, but also repeat customers who will willingly self-market your property, spreading the word about the greatest experience of their lives. Unfortunately, timing can also have a way of surprising you, both positively and negatively.

And Bahram Sepahi has had first-hand experience. Having spent the majority of his career in the US luxury hospitality industry first as guest services manager at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Chicago; then director of rooms at the Four Seasons Resort and Club in Dallas, Texas for nine years; followed by hotel manager of its Washington branch in 1996, he decided that he had done his time in the US and that he and his family needed a radical change.

The shift, however, was a bigger one than he or his family could ever have expected. In June 2001 the Sepahi clan relocated 6000km to Riyadh where Bahram secured the position of general manager at the Four Seasons hotel - one whose iconic arch-like tower offers one of the most dramatic views of the sprawling city.

If it was a change he wanted, that was exactly what he got. Sadly the timing was all wrong. Three months later a band of highly trained Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked several planes only to fly them into the heart of America's financial district, sending shockwaves of panic and outrage across the world. But the timing of the move was only to get worse. Two years after taking his Saudi post Riyadh experienced its own 9/11. On May 12, 2003 the Kingdom witnessed its worst ever suicide attack.Once again attributed to Al Qaeda, it was the first in a wave of deadly attacks to hit Saudi's expat community and the deadliest strike on Americans that year, killing 35 people and wounding a further 160. Sepahi remembers that day vividly. "We always had heightened security alerts but the night of the compound attacks was probably the beginning of the most stressful time we ever had at the hotel," he says, staring into the distance.

"We had a ballroom full of people including royalty and top businessmen and we had staff in the compounds, some that were injured, so we had to take immediate crisis management action." The now-regional vice president of Four Seasons in the Middle East, that includes properties in Amman in Jordan; four hotels in Egypt including the recently opened Alexandria property; Doha in Qatar; Damascus in Syria; and the Dubai Golf Club and a future hotel to be opened in the emirate in 2010; has built up a reputation for strong leadership, and you can see where he got his experience - at first hand.

"You do what you have to do at the time," he says modestly. "It was a matter of responding to the information we had and protecting the guests and employees first and foremost, and then the property. You have to take immediate action and ensure to the best of your ability that everybody is informed and has a chance to be given our best attention. Not that we can protect everyone, but you do what's reasonable and get through it."

While much of Riyadh was asleep and Sepahi's guests were enjoying a meal in the ‘Seasons' restaurant, five vehicles drove through the city; two carried heavily armed assault teams, while three were packed with explosives. Their targets were three compounds: The Dorrat Al Jadawel, owned by the London-based MBI International and Partners subsidiary Jadawel International, the Al Hamra Oasis Village, and the Vinnell Corporation Compound, owned by a Virginia-based defence contractor that was ironically training the Saudi National Guard. All housed large numbers of Westerners.