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Dominik Ruhl - Exploring A Lighter Aspect of Hospitality

Maldives

Interviews

Dominik Ruhl - Exploring A Lighter Aspect of Hospitality

PUBLISHED November 01, 2018

Start us off by telling us bit about yourself and how you first arrived in the Maldives. I was born in Germany and started my hospitality studies back home, combining hotel school and my first working experience. Soon after graduation I was lucky enough to get a scholarship in the US, allowing me participate in a training program with Ritz Carlton in the continental US and was soon after transferred to the companies’ flagship property in Hawaii, where I held various roles from Front Office Manager to Director of Guest Services. It was during this time in Hawaii when I realized that resort operations on islands and alongside beaches was what I wanted to concentrate on. After working in Hawaii for several years I moved to Mexico, where I had the opportunity to open two resort properties, an experience I can only recommend to any young hotelier! A colleague at the time who was working with me at the Four Seasons in Mexico was previously working in the Maldives and recommended that I should go to the Maldives as she thought that I might like it. So when the opportunity came in early 2000 to join the team at Hilton Rangali Island (now Conrad) I took the opportunity on a one year contract and before I knew it, one year turned into eight-een. It seems, my friend back in Mexico was spot on in her assessment of me. Back in those days, there weren't many luxury resorts in the country. I think Four Seasons was the only international five-star hotel before Hilton entered the Maldivian market and there was of-course Soneva Fushi who introduced their now famous barefoot luxury. Those years marked the beginning of five-star hotels and International brands coming to the Maldives, an exciting trend that continues today. I worked at Hilton Rangali for three and a half years before being offered my first General Manager opportunity at the newly opened Mirihi Island Resort. It was working at Mirihi where I realized that luxury is not defined by the ‘hardware’, meaning the building and facilities of a property, but much rather the ‘software’, being the people offering a unique and genuine hospitality. It did not take long that Mirihi -despite only having 2 restaurants, one bar and a small Spatopped the list on Tripadvisor as the number one resort in the country, a rank that it kept for many years to come. This was achieved solely because of the engaged and genuine team members, many of which still work on the island today! Up to this day I remain thankful to Mr. Afeef and Ms. Stierli for having trusted me and allowing me to operate their property in a way that I felt would create lasting impressions for our guests and this experience has undoubtedly shaped me in my career. After spending four years with Mirihi Island Resort, I joined Per Aquum to establish the brand’s operations in the Caribbean. Unfortunately the timing wasn't ideal as the global economic crisis was slowly coming into being, hence these expansion plans were abandoned a year later, allowing me to once again return to the Maldives, this time with Anantara. How did you land your job at LUX*? After a year with Anantara, I left theMaldives to operate a Resort and Marina on St. Lucia Island, allowing me to manage a very different type of operation as well as cater to a mostly American clientele. But I must admit that before too long I noticed how I missed the Maldives and when Naiade Resorts asked me in 2010 to take over the management of their recently opened Diva Resort I could not resist. Diva – was the management company- was going through difficult times following the recession and shortly after I started, Paul Jones - former President of One & Only Resorts, also joined the company and it was very soon after that, when we decided to make some significant changes which subsequently led to the creation of LUX* Resorts & Hotels in 2011. Tell us a little bit about the LUX* rebranding project Normally when you rebrand you spend a lot of money, do a lot of marketing and renovate all of the properties but we didn't have any of that at that time as we had little cash. What we did, we had 3000 people across our properties willing to transform the experiences we wanted to offer to our guests. With their excitement and the assistance of Service Guru Ron Kaufman, we decided to break the traditional cliché of what a luxury hotel had to look and feel like. In fact, the name LUX* came about as the very last thing of our rebranding and came as a result of the working title of the rebranding project, which was “Island light”. We wanted to create a hospitality brand that portrayed a lighter and brighter atmosphere. The word lux comes from the Latin “lucis" which means light - it doesn't come from the word “luxury” at all as many people may assume. The Asterisk behind the name is there to remind us to the fact that we want to be lighter and brighter in anything we do. We wanted to go back and be creative and light-hearted while also being light-footed to the environment. We wanted to bring every little bit of fun into our work and didn't want to take ourselves too seriously as we understood that guests come to these destinations just to have a good time and to get away from a stressful and routine life.We developed further on that and came up with what we now call our “reasons to go”. In all our properties we implemented many unexpected touches, whether it was replacing the lobbies with a Café LUX* coffee shop, our guest finding a message in the bottle, offering a London style phone booth, where guests can make free phone calls to loved ones back home or an ice cream tricycle offering an unexpected treat to the young ones, just to name a few. A lot of these surprises that we have added became an integral part of the brand. Just that shift of mindset, the shift of service delivery and the little things that we added had an immense impact on the guest experience and allowed us to really turn the company around; before too long all our hotels started to perform much better which quickly translated in financial success. With this success we were soon able to renovate our hotels and now most of our existing properties have been or are being renewed. As COO of the LUX* Brand tell us about your main responsibilities that operations that you oversee? Well, on one hand it is to support our General Managers and to ensure that the operations in all the properties work at their very best and that the experience delivered is the same across the portfolio. While we focus on incorporating the individual identity of each destination into the various hotels, we ensure that the levels of service are aligned across the group. On the other hand we are very busy growing our brand and constantly looking for new opportunities of managing hotels. Identifying, planning and opening new properties takes a lot of time and effort but we are very proud that owners in many different destinations have now entrusted us to create amazing properties for them. Tell us about some of the new projects the LUX* Brand is venturing into. We work hard to identify new opportunities for growth and to expand our brand outside of the In-dian Ocean. We currently have 11 new properties in the pipeline with upcoming openings in China, Vietnam, UAE, France and Italy, just to name a few. We are very busy finishing off our second property in the Maldives. LUX* North Male’ Atoll will be a small and intimate island with only 67 villas, ranging between 200 and 1000 square meters. For this property we exchanged the traditional thatched-roofed villas usually found in the Maldives with a variety of penthouse style villas with roof tops to play, relax and retreat. With so many new properties I feel one must stand out and dare to be different or otherwise risk to drown in ‘the sea of sameness’. Apart from that we just launched a new Hotel Brand ‘SALT’ and our first property opened in Mauritius just recently on November 1st with further properties due to open soon in other countries. We also plan to grow our All Inclusive Tamassa brand and are actively looking to add a property under this brand in the Maldives hopefully soon as we see a lot of demand in this sector. A fourth urban brand will be launched in the near future allowing us to target city properties, something we have not done in the past. Construction for the first property under this brand is starting very soon with an opening scheduled for 2021. Having worked 18 years in the Maldives Tourism Industry, what are the major developments to the industry in your perspective? I’ll never forget the first time I came to the Maldives and being escorted to ‘the VIP lounge’ at the Maldivian Air Taxi, which was a sand floored hut with four poles and a roof! Tourism was still very simple in many ways and without mobile phones and barely any internet one would now think we lived in a different era. When we introduced wifi at Mirihi in 2003 it was so unique that even the BBC came and reported on something, which is now being considered as the very basic of any hotel. The transformation of the destination since then is quite remarkable indeed, Maldives now being widely regarded as perhaps the most luxurious tropical holiday destination in the world and with all the development happening now it is anyone’s guess what the next 10 years will bring. I think the good thing in the Maldives is that it has not lost its identity despite the tremendous growth, something that is often the problem with other destinations. The next few years will really show whether we can continue to create and uphold this very strong identity because that’s what really makes the Maldives unique. Some International Brands are scheduled to commence as commercial investments in the Maldives, what are your thoughts about this? Yes, it's a very big shift and I think time will tell what kind of changes this will bring to the country. I think that apart from more luxury resorts being built, the introduction of Guesthouses is a good initiative because this will attract an audience that didn't have proper access to the Maldives be-fore. Many travelers don't necessarily need the luxury but they want to get to know the culture and explore to the country, something the guest houses on local islands are perfect for. This should all for further growth across a wide range of potential future tourists. Despite the tremendous growth, in most cases Maldives still offers the ‘One island, one resort’ concept which the destination has become famous for. Once guests reach their resort they don't know what's happening around the rest of the country and while peak season is very crowded in most touristic destinations, this is not felt in the Maldives and guests still can enjoy the remote island feel that they are looking for. This is and will always be something that can’t easily be cop-ied by other destinations. Share with us some of the unique aspects of managing an international brand specifically in the Maldives as opposed managing properties in Europe or the Middle East. Are there any major challenges that you would like to address? Well, I have seen many international brands coming to the Maldives over the years trying to replicate their normal operational models and only with time realizing that a unique locale requires some important adjustments. By now, most groups have understood this and try to get the help from experienced people who have worked in the Maldives before. It is just a very different way of operating in the Maldives and companies have to adjust to not only the environment but also to the guests’ desires to experience the Maldives first and foremost. The country is so unique to begin with. How do you keep track of the company’s progress and guest satisfaction? Are there any specific metric systems that you found useful? Many! But in the end it is very simple, if the guests are happy, the company will be successful and the financials will follow. It really is as simple as that! We make sure that in all our hotels the general manager or the deputy general manager greet guests immediately upon arrival which is a very important moment that creates that first connection. We follow up with guests throughout their stay and should something go wrong, we are pro-active in the immediate resolution. We of-course also use the usual online guest surveys like many others and closely monitor the various review platforms and act upon any potential rec-ommendations. We have learned that the guest satisfaction translates directly into financial success and went as far as reporting on our training hours in our annual report which we send to all our shareholders. Most Maldivian properties have done the smart concept of service charge, because every team member automatically knows if the business goes well, they will benefit too. This is one of the best ways to ensure employees to take ownership and treat the hotel as if it was their own business. Looking at the different approaches taken by the hospitality brands across the world to create a memorable experience for guest what do you feel is extremely important to keep in mind? Creating the best guest experience! I think less and less people are looking at the hardware. Ten years ago it was about the ‘bling’ and you had to have the latest technology and the most luxurious amenities for instance, but now these things have become less important and guest favor experiences over physical things. It is because of this that we spent countless hours on training our team members in all properties and continue our partnership with Ron Kaufman to this date; Ron having helped many other companies to excel in service delivery, the best example perhaps being Singapore Airlines, who is widely regarded as the best service airline in the world. We recently opened LUX* Grand Gaube in Mauritius after very substantial renovation. It would have been very easy to say, "we have the newest resort with the best new facilities and restaurants!”. Contrary to the Maldives there are far less new openings in Mauritius so it is somewhat easier to make an impression with a new opening. While we created a stunning property, we never focused on the hardware but solely on the guest experience and comfort and to ensure that we make each moment matter for our guests. One year later this seems to have paid off quite well. When we created the brand we at one point realized that we are not really in the hotel or resort business, but are in fact in the time business because people give us their precious time, of which most people have very little! So if guests depart with a positive feeling that their time was well spent and that their holiday was worthwhile, then we did our job.

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