A HOTEL THAT AIMS TO BE IN PEOPLE'S MINDS

The hospitality industry in the UAE is riding a wave of success and people site a shortage of rooms in the years to come — which, of course, is leading to a lot of projects coming up to cater to the demand. Maybourne, is one such group which is keenly looking for its presence ...

By Blessing Johnson

Published: Sat 11 Jun 2005, 12:51 PM

Last updated: Thu 2 Apr 2015, 6:20 PM

in the UAE ... but with a slight difference — they want to build their brand in the mind of the UAE residents rather than have a concrete structure.

The Maybourne, a recently created super-luxury hotel company, is headquartered in London and manages The Berkely, Claridge's and The Connaught — all in Mayfair, the heart of London's West End — and are quite known for their inclination to ultra luxury.

The group's top executives were in Dubai recently to announce the newly-created hotel company. Geraldine McKenna, the CEO of the group, said, "Our aim is to add to our existing hotels by identifying and acquiring landmark properties in key gateway cities around the world. Our vision is to build and grow, while cherishing the individual personality of our hotels, our customers and our people."

The hotels themselves, because of their free-standing nature, unattached to a chain of hotels, offer an unmatched experience, far surpassing the hospitality standards other hotel chains are measured against. A lot of guests from the UAE and the entire Middle-East, prefer there luxury hotels on their holidays to the United Kingdom, and the group intends on increasing awareness of this luxury entity.

"Guests generally go in for a chain of hotels because they know what to expect from a particular chain of hotels, but with us it is completely different — we have a completely different class of service that is far better to what the others offer but guests generally do not know of it unless they stay at one of our hotels. The guests who stay with us once come back to us for life," says Geraldine.

The three super-luxury hotels were previously managed by the Savoy group, which was later dissolved and made way for the Maybourne group, which will own and manage them. The group feels that there is a distinct gap in the market for a group that manages only super-luxury hotel properties and aims to exploit this trend ... and as Geraldine admits, they may have a presence in the UAE in the next couple of years.