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Paul Wright.

As the globe braces for a tough 2009, Park Hyatt Dubai resident manager Paul Wright, director of HR Saji Thomas Varghese and executive assistant manager for marketing Mohammad Labban outline how the hotel plans to succeed during these difficult economic circumstances.

Resident manager

A long-term employee of the Hyatt group, Paul Wright joined the company in 1994 in his native country of Australia, working across a range of Hyatt properties before coming to join the Park Hyatt Dubai in July 2008.

Wright has a background firmly rooted in food and beverage having worked in lower level management roles in F&B following a corporate trainee programme with the company.

"Following that programme I went to the Park Hyatt Canberra that had quite a large F&B operation before moving to the Grand Hyatt Melbourne, where I really enjoyed being heavily involved with conferences and events before I took my first directorship as director of F&B," says Wright. "I then went to Grand Hyatt Bali where I progressed to executive assistant manager for F&B."

Wright came to Dubai for career growth and saw it as the perfect way to experience other aspects of the hotel industry.

"The opportunity that was available here was aligned with my career. The company felt it was an ideal opportunity to move away from an F&B focus and move into a role more involved in other aspects of the hotel, which was also in line with my vision for my career too," he explains.

He adds that he does miss the day-to-day involvement with F&B a little but enjoys his broader role as resident manager that allows him to have a hand in F&B events on occasions.

"I spend a lot of time with individual executive committee members looking at all the aspects of our business like strategic marketing initiatives and especially in today's environment looking at cost saving initiatives working with the director of finance and the heads of the individual departments concerned," he says.

"We look at whether or not things are going to make business sense and if they going to achieve what we want them to.

"I also spend a lot of time with Stuart [Deeson] the general manager and it's very beneficial for me to work with him as his background is rooms, sales and marketing and mine is obviously F&B so it's a nice blend."

This close working relationship between all the executive committee is going to be paramount in the coming times of financial downturn that Wright says has well and truly arrived in Dubai.

"We are certainly seeing a financial impact on the market. It's still very early for us to say what the full impact is going to be but we have already experienced a 25-30% drop in our business levels pretty much throughout the hotel over the last few months," he concedes.

"Certain areas are holding their own, like our spa product because of its individuality and its external guests. It's able to survive differently because it's not as reliant on residents and is currently only looking at an 8-10% drop in business."

Wright however, is remaining positive about the situation and explains that the property is prepared for all eventualities and ready to respond to the economic challenge in a proactive manner.

"The [financial] situation forces you to adjust; adjusting the business, the cost structure, the manpower; this will force operators to look at the way they work and challenge us at the hotel to find new ways of doing things and I think this process is helpful," he comments.

"Going through this will make us come out stronger at the end."

He explains that the hotel has to be realistic but at the same time the need to challenge itself is a high priority to remain competitive.

"I think that looking at the market we have to be realistic in terms of the targets we set ourselves for occupancy, RevPAR, average rates, we're trying to be realistic but also to challenge ourselves; to look at new business opportunities and in our operation and how we can make things more efficient but also how we can maintain our brand promise, service delivery, deliver what we say we are as a Park Hyatt and also to grow too," he says.

"We're looking to cross train our staff, give them opportunities to give them different jobs and to perhaps use this time when we might not be so busy to train and to build on those key resources so as it starts to pick up again we are in a strong position to capitalise on the market."

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