The right team for the task

To build a hotel you need to find the right people to help you; Ecos Hotels group director Ralph Noblet explains how he found a dedicated team that shared his vision for a green budget hotel.

On the surface, the idea of developing a new hotel and subsequently a chain seems fairly simple - conceive a project, find a developer with the land, hire an architect, acquire financing, build the structure and open with great success. In reality, it is more complex of course, and certainly not risk free.

Development is a messy business, with lots of false starts and circling back to reassess decisions. At each step, we have had to consider altering previous decisions for one reason or another, without compromising our ultimate vision of a chain of sustainable properties that sets an industry benchmark for environmentally friendly design and operation.

Developing the Ecos Hotels project and the first green hotel successfully means bringing together the experience of scores of professionals from specialists, real estate, finance, design, construction and many other disciplines, whose work must be coordinated and channelled to complete the project in line with the Ecos vision, on time and within budget.

In order for Ecos Hotels to be a success we needed to find not just the best people but the right mix of people, who had the experience and were committed to maintaining the clarity of Ecos' vision for a sustainable hotel.

Having a clear picture of what we want to achieve and being able to be as specific as possible was critical. We reached that point with the design of our business plan and every member of the team had to understand that concept and the reasons behind it.

It may sound clichéd, but it's not the amount of money you have to play with that will define how successful your project will be. What makes a difference at every level is the people involved. The selection process is key and, as with every other aspect of what we've done, we have made absolutely no compromises.

Knowing exactly what we were looking for, we outlined precisely the work to be done and approached reputable local and international architectural firms.

Then began the selection processes that led to the appointment of Godwin Austen Johnson (GAJ) with whom we are developing Ecos Hotels as a modular and duplicable hotel chain, starting with our first project - the Ecos Dubailand.

The reason they were chosen, beyond their reputation and track record over the past 30 years in and around this region, is that they shared our vision and understood that it was now necessary for hotel design to consider the environment at all times.

Everyone working on the Ecos project is doing so for the same reason. We are trying to achieve something unique and something that is required in this region, and our whole team has a profound motivation to be a part of this groundbreaking project.

Creating the right team is like building a strong marriage in that you start with a strong founding principle and communicate constantly to achieve success. It all takes place over a period of time - we meet, get to know each other and learn to look beyond the obvious.

Our values had to be in line for anything durable to be built, and after we'd established that they were, we had to learn to trust each other. Transparency and professionalism combined to create a mutual respect leading to understanding and partnership.

In the year that most of us have worked on this project, I have never witnessed any tension at any time. This is not to say that there is no pressure - there are time constraints and challenges aplenty - but there is no negative tension, and everyone's work is interlinked.

We are moving forward, respecting deadlines and budget requirements. That tells me I have the right mix of people.

It takes intelligence to make sure you appoint the right people to work for you, and even more intelligence and humility to actually listen to them and follow the advice you pay them for.

Having this team around us, allows for maximum efficiency. For instance, we may have taken a bit more time to get the concept right in terms of design at the early stages of the project, but it has allowed us to avoid having to go back and rethink or redesign and waste time.

This is an example, amongst many others, of the benefits of the way we work.

Certainly the best and most obvious benefit will be the ultimate success of Ecos Hotels in realising its aim - to create a group of environmentally friendly budget hotels.

At this stage the list of players around the table is endless. Operations people at the head office, architects and engineers working on the big picture, consultants from every possible field, lawyers, project managers, contractors, sub-contractors, marketing people, and more. So, it's easier to break them into the main groups.

Hotel Management Holding is the mother group of ECOS Hotels. Within the head office I was appointed as director to head the creation and development of ECOS Hotels.

Around me are the other directors in charge of the rest of the group, such as our managing director, director of operation, director of technical and services, director of finance, director of business development, director of MPJ (our own marketing firm) and of course the rest of the team at the head office.

And we cannot forget, as they are playing an instrumental role, the partners at the head of the organisation.

GAJ is our architect and consulting firm. They were appointed almost at the very beginning and are at the heart of the project. We have been working hand in hand and the relationship that has built over the past 10 months is a crucial element to our success.

They have designed Ecos Hotels from the initial rendering all the way to the detailed design and are intertwined with the future development of our brand.

Within that group, you have their partner and lead architect, his colleagues and partners, his team of architects - a whole firm of over 100 people in Dubai alone. Finally Currie and Brown has just joined us to take over as project manager for the Ecos Dubailand.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, these firms are not concerned with achieving a quick success. To them, this is not just another project to generate revenues: it's something more.

The contractors who will be awarded the construction are amongst the very best in the market, currently working on multi-billion projects, as are our consultants. Our first hotel is not going to cost that much, I assure you. So what is their motivation? Quite simply, this project brings together many new innovative facets. At the top of the list is the environmental angle.

It has been considered in every phase of the design and the people involved have been appointed, in part, for their experience in that field and motivation to work on a project taking that approach.

The modular and innovative duplicable systems for the development are very interesting and look towards future techniques of building. This is again an important portion of Ecos Hotels programme. How to build faster, thus offering a quicker return, whilst at the same time offering consistency, quality, great rates and most importantly reducing the negative impact on the environment.

The whole sustainable approach is important as we look to the future of hotel design and begin to consider our industry's negative impact on the environment.

In conclusion, there was a blank page at the start and only a few people dreaming of realising the Ecos concept, and now we have a team that understands the importance of what we're doing.

There is no magic spell. It will take vision, humility, experience, patience, understanding, communication, determination, a bit of luck and a lot of hard work from everyone involved.

Ralph Noblet is the director of Ecos Hotel. For more information email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it