As the vice president and managing director of Makkah Fairmont
Raffles Hotels International (FRHI), Mohammed Arkobi is a widely respected hotelier,
and yet, just like his recently opened Makkah hotels, he is also proving to be something
of an enigma – Arkobi is the only hotelier we have met who was a boxer for 11 years
prior to entering the hospitality business.
And he doesn’t pull any punches when discussing the opening of
Raffles Makkah Palace, which opened on August 11 this year, at the beginning of
Ramadan, and the highly anticipated Makkah Clock Royal Tower a Fairmont Hotel
– which came online in time for Hajj.
“We opened Makkah Palace Raffles on the first day of Ramadan,
and already had a strategy with opening that we didn’t want to exceed 50% of the
occupancy because we are still in the opening procedures, so we thought 50% was
a fair occupancy percentage to open with and we got 48%, which was close,” he explains.
“The most important thing for us was the feedback, and it was
amazing — people loved the product and guests also loved the new concept of Raffles,
which is new in Makkah.”
Saudisation targets
The Fairmont
properties in Makkah have already made headlines; increasing the number of rooms
in the holy city by more than 1000, and having to recruit more than 4000 new hotel
employees in the process.
“Between the three properties in Makkah, we will need 4500 colleagues.
We committed to the Saudi government that we will have 35% Saudi nationals, and
this is a challenging percentage for us, but thank god we had 32% of Saudis and
they are doing fantastically,” he says.
“The rest of the colleagues we are hiring are from 17 different
countries and it is a big task and a challenging issue when you have multicultural
nationalities and you adapt them to one culture — it is a challenging issue but
we are happy with the results, we are doing well.”
Making the task even more difficult perhaps, is the fact that
every member of staff working in the Fairmont properties in Makkah must be Muslim
— no non-Muslims are permitted to enter the holy city. In addition to finding Muslim colleagues to staff
the property, the company had the additional cost of building mock-up rooms away
from the holy city.
“It did cost because our mockups, rooms and everything was in
Jeddah and of course it costs a lot of money, but it’s worth it,” explains Arkobi.
“In our design and construction phase, we had a mockup room in
Jeddah for our non-Muslim colleagues and senior executives so that they could see
it, and we also did some of our training in the mock up rooms,” he adds.
Further development
It is estimated that more than 13 million Muslims travel to Makkah
annually — a number which is only expected to increase in the next decade, and goes
some way towards explaining why a number of hotel companies are clamouring to put
a flag there.
“In Makkah I think there is room for everybody,” Arkobi asserts.
“After seven years, Makkah can accommodate 10 million people at the same time so
there is potential there for everyone.
“Being in this iconic location, I think it will help a lot in
the development of other hotels,” he adds.
It is an iconic location indeed, but it is also a seasonal destination,
and Arkobi admits that the occupancy figures during the city’s low season “could
be between 8-10%, or perhaps even lower”.
“The low season for Makkah is about 65-70 days of the year, and
then you have the medium season, the shoulder season and the high season,” he explains.
“The yearly average occupancy
in five-star hotels in Makkah is between 65-68%, so we hope this first year we will
come with the average in the market, but from next year I think [we will have] higher
occupancy,” Arkobi adds.
And guests will certainly have something to return for, with
the addition of Fairmont’s third property in Makkah;
Swissôtel Makkah, due to open in 2011, and other Fairmont
properties due to enter the market in Saudi Arabia in the next few years.
”There is a lot of negotiation in the pipeline,” Arkobi reveals.
“We think by the end of 2012 we’ll have another five or six hotels
hopefully. They will be all around the Kingdom. We are talking to the owners and
negotiating and hopefully we can do more,” he adds.
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