Can you give us a brief introduction on the Marriott Hotel in Bucharest and when it will open its doors?
The construction has been going on for a pretty long time but during the last couple of months the building has improved a lot because the hotel should open at the end of October 2000. This means that in about six and a half months the soft opening of the hotel will take place. Normally you do a soft opening when you open the doors and you greet the first customer, but not everything is in place. Maybe not all the rooms are ready, one floor is still under refurbishing and things like that. When everything is ready and clean, then you normally do the grand opening, which is normally between 2 to 4 months after the soft opening. Last week we met with the managing director of the construction company and he told us that right now everything is on schedule. This is not in the Marriott's hands but in the hands of the construction side and as soon as they give us the green light we will be ready to go for the opening.
Concerning the food and beverage outlets we will have a big Champions Sports Bar and Restaurant which is the American restaurant concept of Marriott, which is absolutely mind blowing for everybody. So, the American Sports Bar and Restaurant called Champions has the motto "Good food, good times, good sports". For example, the waiter is serving you the menu on an American football and if someone wants to have a Margarita, that is the menu for the cocktail. If you turn the ball around you will see the cocktail written on it. It will be a totally new and outstanding food concept and a beverage and bar concept. Not only for Bucharest, but also for whole Romania. It has been very successful and in Eastern Europe, for example, we have the Champion already in Warsaw and it is absolutely successful. The key of its success are the reasonable prices, excellent fast and personalized service and a very relaxed atmosphere. There will be a lot of TV's in every corner where all kinds of sport events will be broadcast live. The waiters will serve in jeans and Marriott Polo-shirts to add to the informal atmosphere.
Another food and beverage concept will be Cucina - The Italian Kitchen, which is an Italian restaurant, again a Marriott concept. We will have an outstanding food and beverage quality. Something else that will be different will be the service and the kitchen. The chefs will be in the restaurant, preparing the pizza in an open flame pizza oven in the middle of the restaurant. Waitresses will be again dressed totally different, unlike any waiter. We will have personalized service because we want to have a special relation with the customer. The waiters will be trained in singing lessons since they will sing Italian operas and Italian songs. All this will develop a very relaxed atmosphere, at reasonable prices, and with very high food quality standards, what Marriott stands for anyhow. This kind of restaurant already exists in Dubai, and it was so successful that you have a waiting list of almost two months to get a space in the restaurant.
We will also have a Vienna Cafe, meaning a Vienna coffee shop that is going to be something different. Vienna, in Austria, is very famous for its cakes, for the coffee and for its atmosphere, and it is exactly this atmosphere that we want to recreate. This will be the meeting point in town if you want a cup of coffee and a piece of cake in a great atmosphere with classical live music. Marriott usually stands for very personalized, relaxed and guest oriented service.
In addition to the restaurants I have mentioned before, we will also have a piano bar in the lobby area. If someone does not want this relaxed American type of bar concept, then we still have a piano bar with a very nice cozy atmosphere, so it will be a typical hotel bar. In addition to that our main restaurant with 200 seats will be the Cupola Restaurant because we will have two couples within the building with natural daylight streaming. Under one of these couples will be the Cupola Restaurant where we will serve breakfast and international cuisine.
Why have you chosen such a grand building?
This may be a question you should ask Mr. Marriott himself or the CEOs of Marriott. It is pretty huge - 402 rooms. We will have a grand ballroom - 633 sq. meters - a junior ballroom of 350 sq. meters and 17 additional meeting rooms. That means the largest meeting space in town. We will additionally have a casino - a Night Club - a health academy with indoor swimming pool and squash courts, food corners, rented office space and retail areas. A huge guarded parking area is also provided. Marriott simply believes in this market for the future.
What kind of ambiance are you planing to have?
It will definitely be the highest profile
hotel in town with a five star service. If we talk
about a Marriott five star, this does not mean the
service will be detached. Marriott in general wants
the Marriott philosophy really in terms of services
and hospitality, i.e. personalized, friendly and
hospitable, a relaxed atmosphere with the customer,
but fast and correct. Why not having a five star
hotel with a Champion sports bar where you have
a relaxed atmosphere (with a the waiter who serves
you the menu on an American football); and why not
having a five star proper diner in Cucina restaurant
with the waiter singing Italian operas? It is just
something creative and different, but the service
will be always correct, not detached at all in the
relation with the customer. |
But is the Marriott then going to be more than a hotel, a leisure center perhaps?
Actually you can check in the hotel and you can spend the whole week without leaving it. You really have everything you want here: a health academy, a casino, restaurants, night club and shops. It is a great concept.
Do you think that Romanians workers are prepared to work in such a totally revolutionary concept?
We are absolutely convinced that we will find the right people. We already have a lot of applications and CVs and held already some interviews. We will definitely not look for personnel in our competitor hotels. I would not mention the hotel name. Our target are schools and universities. Basically we want people who have an academic degree, young and motivated people, creative people who have this "go for it" kind of attitude. We are open for everything, if we are convinced that we can do anything together. We just have to speak them or to convince them and give them feedback and background information from our side. We want to have bright people, clever people and people we can train the Marriott way. Once the people will join the Marriott hotel in Bucharest we will train them for one, two or three months. Once the opening date is near we will fly in the heads of training departments from other Marriott properties in Europe. We will give them the feeling about the Marriott philosophy, the way Marriott does business, the way Marriott is treating its customers and we will train them about hospitality that Marriott stands for. We will have to train them from how to carry a tray with food and glasses of water, on how to check somebody in on the computer at the reception, or how to carry suitcases. This is not a problem at all.
I think that young people here are very well educated, polite and friendly, they speak a decent up to a very good English actually and that is what we are looking for.
How many people will you employ?
We are looking for 500 people, but this is just an estimation. They might be up to 600 but most surely it will be 500 plus people. In a couple of weeks the director of human resources will join us and then we will have a rough overview of how the skeleton will look like and how many people we will exactly need for each department. We still have to do some research about the competition and how our colleagues are doing comparing to the size of the hotel, how many people they have employed, etc. We want to provide a high class service to our customers and for that we need good people and a lot of people.
Don't you think there are too many 5 star hotels in Romania? don't you think the market might be too small for you, especially given the size of your operations?
Actually we are not scared, in fact, we are pretty confident. We are positive thinking people (we always are). On one side you are right, there is a Sofitel, which is a nice hotel, there is a Hilton, which is a very nice hotel again and with an outstanding location, there is Crown Plaza - one of the nicest Crown Plaza hotels I have seen by now -, and there is a huge Intercontinental hotel with 423 rooms, not to mention the other smaller hotels. Marriott has done a lot of research and otherwise it would not have decided to come to Bucharest. And in fact, the demand is in town. Let me just give you an example. Let us imagine a business traveler, a senior executive who flies business class with British Airways from London to Bucharest to close a business here, and who is paying USD 1,300 only for the plane ticket. He is staying here for only 2-3 days to close the deal. I am sure that these people are willing to spend a couple of dollars more to get the service they expect. There is a demand here in the city, especially during week-days. We will have a lot of challenges during the weekends because leisure tourism is almost not existing in Bucharest, but there is a demand. We will get some business from the other hotels, but we are not searching for them. Marriott stands for a normal, honest, polite and hospitable service, and the Marriott brand name will help us as well. There is also the Marriott Rewards system, whereby for every dollar you spend you get ten points. There are millions of Marriott members who will definitely travel to Bucharest some day and will rather stay with us only because of the Marriott Rewards program.
The hotel is located very close to Downtown, next to the People's House, the Opera, the Botanical Garden and teh Presidential Palace and is close to the residential area of Cotroceni, where many expatriates are living. And these people are willing to spend some money to get a very personalized and good service, an international service. We are also close to a lot of Ministries and we will also try to get our share from them, since we have the necessary facilities here. We can accommodate groups up to 400 people without any problem. This means that major conventions can be held here in the city, ministries can bring in official delegations. I think this is a bust for the whole city and for the country. Many organizations have decided to do their Eastern European conferences in Budapest or in Prague and not in Bucharest because there was no hotel who was able to accommodate such huge delegations of up to 400 people. From the end of the year we will be here and we will be able to accommodate them. So, why not coming to Bucharest, bringing in the business, especially knowing that a Marriott brand new hotel is here in the city, offering all the Marriott services our company is known for.
What will be your message to welcome the guests?
One of our philosophies will definitely be "every guest leaves satisfied". We will try to accomplish all the guests needs. Our philosophy is that "when you are comfortable you can do anything". |
