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Levent Tekün.

As the team at Shangri-La Qaryat Al Beri in Abu Dhabi gears up for the launch of yet another addition to the complex - the four-star Traders Hotel - its sales & marketing (Levent Tekün), F&B (Joseph Matar) and spa (Nancee Ong-Wee) managers highlight their priorities for 2009.

Director of sales and marketing

Having been part of the pre-opening team at Shangri-La Qaryat Al Beri, director of sales and marketing Levent Tekün has seen the hotel develop from "virtually nothing" at an incredibly fast rate. Since launching the property back in 2007, Tekün has been part of an equally fast expansion at the property.

"We had Chi the Spa come on line, the Villas, the Residences, Pearls and Caviar, the Souk and now Traders Hotel, which is due to open in the third quarter of this year," says Tekün.

"We will be the first Shangri-La Hotel & Resort complex to house four of our brands on one site - the hotel itself; the luxury Shangri-La brand, the Residences, Chi the Spa and Traders, our leading four-star brand that will have 301 rooms, all-day dining and its own gym, swimming pool and beach, but all connected within the same complex," he says.

Tekün reveals, however, that Traders wasn't part of the plan when Shangri-La was under development.

"Initially, when the commissioning was done, the building was going to be an extension to the Residences; however, with the current trends, especially of 2007/2008 and the boom in the market, there was certainly an interest in getting more hotel rooms on line. We looked at the possibility of this, we proposed it and here we are, a year and a half later, it's been redesigned and reconfigured inside from apartments to a hotel," says Tekün.

The priority now will be to create awareness of the Traders brand in the local market, says Tekün, who describes the concept as a "hassle-free hotel facility".

Meanwhile, at the original property, the focus is on maintaining client relationships and the strong positioning the brand has developed.

"We've started to obtain a strong client base and our repeat guest ratio is growing. Our established Shangri-La hotels average 42% repeat custom, which is actually quite high for a hotel company.

"At the moment our hotel, which has only been open for a year and a half and six months as an entire complex, has a repeat guest ratio of about 36%, which is above the industry norm [for that time period] and we are confident we will be in line with the brand by the end of this year," asserts Tekün.

Also high on the priority list for 2009 is promoting the Villas at Shangri-La, three of which are family-themed and three of which are themed to suit events or private functions.

"The villas are unique in themselves; they are probably the most luxurious part of the complex. Three have cinemas and they all have their own swimming pools; it's basically a self-contained unit with butler service, car parking and direct access into the hotel beach," Tekün explains.

"These are of importance to us and we need to create a larger awareness of them, which we've started doing, especially for the local and Middle Eastern market with larger families," he says.

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