Luxury Travel Advisor - January 2008 - (Page 56) COVER STORY THE BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL & BUNGALOWS’ Presidential Suite evokes a grand Hollywood style. way to fame. “A good part of my career has been to go into hotels and execute a total turnaround. It wasn’t by intention that I got into that,” laughs Cowdray, “But I can see the potential of a hotel and how it can best be utilized to get the best energy in there.” Selecting a celebrity chef is not a simple feat, he says. “You have to be aware of what’s going on in the marketplace and you have to have your contacts so that you can call them when you need them.” But at the same time, these restaurants have to be profitable, says Cowdray. “It’s very easy to invite someone like Alain Ducasse in to open a restaurant and to make no money out of it. It has to be a profitable venture for the hotel; it has to be a proper return on investment,” he says. Engineering a dynamic landscape in a hotel also tends to draw in celebrities and dignitaries, which is part of Cowdray’s strategy. “We’re trying to create the very best, and therefore encourage anyone who can really appreciate the finer things in hospitality, but there’s a price for it. One has to pay for that, and they expect us to deliver,” says Cowdray, noting that he expects the hotel to be a natural draw for this level of guest. “We don’t court celebrities by giving them everything free. Some organizations do but we don’t. We’ve just created three magnificent suites (see page 23) and it’s the celebrity market that we’ve built those suites to. The product attracts them, and so does Alain Ducasse,” he says. Cowdray is a hands-on manager who believes in being quite visible in the hotel. He’s also a firm believer in building a strong team to execute his vision, a strategy that will be key as he moves on to his new duties. “It’s about keeping your strategy right; the team I’ve got is a great team, they know what’s expected in the hotel, they know where it’s going, they know what their goals are and what’s to be accomplished over the next few years,” says Cowdray, who started his hotel career with InterContinental, enjoying stints in Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sydney and in London, where he repositioned The Churchill for the company before leaving to go to Claridge’s. It was upon joining Claridge’s that Cowdray learned the importance of building a strong team. “Claridge’s had just been renovated with £15 million being spent on the renovation and therefore I had an anticipation of the hotel being in a great position,” he recalls with a smile. “But I suppose that the first two years there were the hardest time in my career. It was just so incredibly badly run. It required a complete reorganization. I didn’t realize how behind the scenes, how badly maintained it was.” In the end, however, Cowdray says the recovery experience was “phenomenal.” “It was great to turn it around and the area that I particularly enjoyed was the staff. When I go into hotels, I set a vision and I bring the team around to believing in it. It’s always the people first. At luxury hotels, if you don’t have the right team and you don’t have the pride and the belief in the hotel, then you can’t deliver the service.” As the new CEO eyes potential proper- ties for the Dorchester Collection, he may very well be using his turnaround skills to consider whether existing hotels will be joining the five-star collection. The strategy will be for properties with fully established names to carry the “Dorchester Collection” tag, a practice that will allow the company to open multiple hotels in a city. For example, Dorchester has a hotel in Los Angeles (Beverly Hills), “but if the market is strong, we can absorb another one. Each property will be assessed on its merits and how it fits into its marketplace. We don’t want to take on a hotel in a city that we couldn’t make a success of because the market’s on its way down. That’s why we’re not in a rush. It will be a slow but concerted effort,” says Cowdray. Along those same lines, he’ll be using the teamwork concept that has worked so well for him in running hotels. In his words, he’ll be relying on his acquisitions department to be his primary scouting arm, “but we’ll also use all the disciplines that we have, from sales and marketing, to finance, to acquisitions, to François [Delahaye] and myself and also the other general managers. The way we’re going to run the company is very much as a team, so the general managers will play a very vital role in that,” says Cowdray. “We see our general managers as being very much responsible for their hotels and contributing to the company as well. So it’s not like some companies where the hotels are very centrally controlled. The responsibility is very decentralized and it’s staying that way,” he says, with confidence. 56 LUXURY TRAVEL ADVISOR | January 2008
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