Novotelling it how it is

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Richard Senior.

Novotel and Ibis World Trade Centre director of business development Richard Senior, director of operations Yasser Ahmed and director of human resources Michael Smith talk candidly to Hotelier Middle East about the challenges of bettering the brands’ flagship products — and why they have such a happy team of staff at the Dubai cluster of properties.

Director of Business Development

Novotel director of business development Richard Senior has been in his role at Accor's World Trade Centre properties for two years.

"A big attraction for me was the size of the properties," explains Senior. "I've always worked in big hotels; I like big hotels."

"Another attraction was looking after two very different properties. Firstly you've got a very upscale four-star which is the reference hotel for Novotel throughout the Middle East. It's one of the flagships for the company and runs at incredibly high occupancy - in the low 90s all year round. Similarly, Ibis is the reference hotel for the Middle East and again one of the global flagships. It maintains an occupancy year-round in the mid 90s."

But Senior admits that properties giving such strong performances come with unique challenges.

"One of the main questions of course was how do you better two incredibly successful hotels attached to the World Trade Centre?"

Senior's answer was to assess several aspects of the business. "We looked at the way we do business, the mix of business, then we adjusted that mix to focus more on corporate over mid-week. Over exhibition times, we worked on building the leisure business more at weekends, as that was one of our softer periods," he explains. "Generally it was looking at the strategic approach for both hotels - mix, rate and peak and trough times."

Senior explains his role as overseeing the properties' sales, marketing, revenue and reservations groups - "basically any external lines of communications," he comments.

Novotel and Ibis have always had a great relationship with the Trade Centre itself, Senior continues.

"We work with them for all major exhibitions, so we work with the conference desk and the events desk there. Obviously when they get big groups coming in we're obviously their first choice, so the relationship works well."

But times are changing - and the hotel-trade centre relationship is set to become more important than ever.

"From 2010 onwards we have the new exhibition centre over in Jebel Ali," Senior notes. "So I think one of our focuses is going to be working more on the congress markets for the Trade Centre venue. The big exhibitions like Big 5 will move to Jebel Ali, so we need to fill that gap with congress business and we'll need to work together with Trade Centre to make sure we get that business coming in.

"I think we're going to see a bit of a shift around and I think we'll have more leisure business," he says.

"I don't think we're going to suffer too much with occupancy, if at all, I just think we need to keep an eye on the ball if the drivers coming in are going to change.

"But our team is committed to delivering the best possible service; as long as we continue to do that, we'll continue to exceed people's expectations."

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