Prof. Dr. Carl C. Rohde Conducts International Hospitality Trend- and Coolhunt Research

Prof. Dr. Carl C. Rohde conducts international Hospitality Trend- and Coolhunt research for the Hotel Management School Maastricht. During his research trips he also does depth interviews with the most interesting General Managers of the most interesting hotels in town. We like to share their insights with you.

Interview with Mario Candeias, Regional Manager Lisbon Area Pestana Hotels & Resorts plus General Manager at the Pestana Palace Hotel & National Monument (194 rooms)

Mario Candeias
Regional Manager Lisbon Area Pestana Hotels & Resorts
+ GM at the Pestana Palace Hotel & National Monument

1. You and the hotel

I am a passionate hotel leader. That is how I define myself. I have always been in hospitality management and I always wanted to be. I am also a passionate team player. I am a human capital developer. And I also appreciate trends. I keep track of them. Not to copy or follow them all into the hotels I am involved with, but to set them.

I am the regional manager (complex manager) for the Pestana hotels in the Lisbon region. There are four hotels comprised in this area. There are worldwide almost one hundred Pestana hotels. I am based in the Pestana Palace, which is the flagship of the Group. The board of the group also operates from here, which presses me and my team to stay sharp and relevant and at the top of the game every single day, for maximum performance. I enjoy that.

I always worked in the South of Portugal. I am now manager for eight months here at the Palace. They invited me for the job. I knew some members of the Pestana Management Team before-hand, who also knew my profile before the invitation came. Pestana Group had a clear vision of what had to be done to intensify the competitiveness of the Hotel. This environment eased the hiring process.

What is it that makes you a good professional? Technically, image-wise, and speech-wise: 3 conditions that help me compete as a professional.Iam a sensitive person and pretty much up-to-date. Pestana Palace needed to compete a bit more at a conceptual level, positioning-wise, operations-wise (its competitive set is aggressive). This will help raise profitability in the medium run. The Board also wanted the hotel to become more competitive – and I help build very competitive Teams. At present, we compete with the Four Seasons and the Lapa Palace, here in Lisbon (our core competitive set). So we are enhancing our output and doing just that!

1. What about Lisbon – how special the city is?

Actually I am writing a newspaper article right now. Title: Lisbon - Sleeping Beauty? On the surface, there are reasons to be satisfied in and with Lisbon. But for the trained eye, not quite! When I talk with the tourism managers of the Hotel Association here, they show me pleasant statistics about how great Lisbon is doing. We were mentioned in the New York Times four times. We had a general 4% rise in turnover. And we have a new museum full of stories of Lisbon. These results are sufficient quite indeed. But to me, sufficient is not enough. Because I think we must compete globally.

And from a global perspective you see that the difference in average price rate for a Four Seasons room in Paris and a comparable Four Seasons room in Lisbon is a fifth or a fourth. Among other factors, this one alsohelps reinforce the idea that Lisbon has indeed a positioning problem. Once a year HVS issues its valuation index: 33 cities are ranked there. Lisbon is at 26, close to Bratislava, Dublin and Bucharest. This means that no one shall advice the top leading hotel brands to come to Lisbon. Or the capital base here in Lisbon is scarce, so there’s not enough cash pwer to attract those premium brands. No Ultimate Luxury hotel brand, like the Peninsula or the Shangri-La, will come here in the foreseeable future. That doesn’t help positioning the city in high-end markets. So are we really doing that well? Those Ultimate Luxury hotels go to Barcelona instead, as well as to other “sexier” and more competitive cities. The Mandarin has opened there. They have another Mandarin Oriental under-development in Marbella. Jumeirah opened in Mallorca. Barcelona is in the HVS Top 10 in Europe! This helps attract visibility, awareness and relevance. The Market is there. The brands help enhance it and bring even more market. Look how Barcelona has managed to build an immensely successful cruise industry. We could have done that too. We need more vibrant places in and around Lisbon .They exist, but they are dormant here. Not so in Barcelona. Vienna is also competing strong now, Montenegro too, even Morocco as a country. The Monocle magazine is featuring an issue now about Generation Lusophonia – that is: the Portuguese speaking countries. There is a lot about upcoming Africa in Monocle, while Brazil is stealing the show. There is hardly any mentioning of Portugal. We Are Not Competing Well. Not the full ability of our knowledge and not to the full potential of our resources.

1. What makes your hotel special?

We are in a very fast-pace competitive mode and as a consequence we are launching new services that will stress uniqueness in the top luxury sector. It is all about positioning ourselves better, to help us increase our market value.

One example: we just released a service function calledBreakfast Master. Breakfast is the place where all our guests will meet us, so it has to be an impressive key moment. Carlos is our Breakfast Master. He is part micro house keeper, part general manager in the breakfast area. He is part maitre d’hotel, part host, part public relations manager, part modern butler. We really designed this new concept from scratch. The Breakfast Master will have to memorize a lot: all the VIPS for instance. He must give special attention to special guests. You yourself came in yesterday late and unexpected. But the flow of information will start to stream soon and you will be ‘studied’. You will notice. Basically it means that will be treated as an individual, not as just a guest. He will anticipate you needs, try to read your intentions and serve you accordingly, no-frills, elegantly appointed bespoke service delivered daily.

Another example: this summer we were the first hotel in the city here to launch a Mocktail Menu. It basically is a cocktail menu with non-alcohol beverages. The city of Lisbon did not have it. We have taken ownership of it. It helps us position ourselves. This also has great media value, so the media enhances our reach through these types of “contents” we keep creating. And guests love to be in famous hotels. Helps their own storytelling, enhances their travel experience. This is what we are all about.

Also we startedCo-Branding the hotel a bit more aggressively. We are creating a marketing concept which is called The Intimist Sessions. Actually these are events for the very few, the highly selected. We are using it to make the hotel more vibrant in and to the city.

Every two months we do it.

The first one will be in December. Sessions we will co-create with other luxury brands. We will bring them to the hotel and let perform a creation act for, sometimes even with, our select guests. We are talking with brands such as Chanel, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, so to try and collaborate with their craftsmen. This is also good for these brands, who are always eager to capture more attention in the city. For example, Bags will be created together with the guests. Watches will be assembled, suits will be cut by a senior cutter, flower bouquets will be designed, etc. The craftsmen will explain and demonstrate how it is done. I am now trying to bring in a jewelry maker of Van Cleef and Arpels new jewel design school in Paris (L’Ecole). They have created a school in Paris and I want to bring in a teacher of them who will create a jewel with our guests. It must be very, very elite performances.

Another example: we are also enhancing the branding of our Concierges. We have four Les Clefs d’Or concierges. Competing hotels have normally just one. National media calls them The Dream Makers. They are leading a communication project we are now finalizing. A newsletter of their own, that will help convince our guests how ‘Cool’ and interesting Lisbon and the surrounding areas are. This is the main aim, but also to function as the key that opens the unreachable Lisbon. The newsletter will be calledLisbon Confidential. The first in Iberian Peninsula, I am sure. It will be filled with very inside knowledge of the city. If a guest wants to check a museum at night on his own with his lady, the concierge will make it happen. He will serve the impossible.

Recently, we were nominated best 5 star hotel in Portugal, ahead of all the fierce competittors. This helps us gain ever more visibility, vibration and relevance. This year we won, leaving the Ritz Four Seasons behind us. Then the biggest television network came over and spent one month here, participating with our staff, actually working with our staff as part of the team. The journalist played cook, receptionist, porter even hotel manager: 40 minutes on prime time TV,broadcast to over 1 million people. Nice.

One more example: this is a Palace. So we are going to create Palatial Functions. Imagine my porter right now: a nice, normal guy with a long hat and with gloves wishing you a good day. But that is the regular experience everywhere. Imagine my breakfast hostesses right now. If you come to our breakfast she greets you even before you see the actual breakfast and she brings you to your seats. . This is normal procedure - and therefore not good enough when you are doing Real Luxury. So we are re-inventing: We Will Make Them Palatial. They will be dressed in the fashion of the 19th Century when this palace was built. Their clothes will be reminiscent of the clothes of the palace’s founder, the Marquis of Valle Flor. We want to send our guests a bit into the palatial past with us. We will teach the staff some 19th Century phrases as well, so the experience is as real as possible to the guest. The Breakfast Master already resembles a bit of this and, together with the hostess, they deliver a cutting-edge breakfast experience to the guests.

This all sounds impressive, pretty aligned with the luxury global scene of the present. But some companies are taking it to the next level (ultra-luxury level). Take the Rosewood Hotels and Resorts. of six stars hotels. In some of their properties, they have more than 5 staff members for each hotel room they own. Average room rate is around 1400 to 1500 dollars. So they can design more services than I can right now. There is a romance director: if you want to sleep under the open sky, but in your own comfortable hotel bed, he arranges it for you. There is a Star Man. He teaches interested guests how to look at the stars above, configuration of constellations, etc. This might not be for all – it is Niche Story Telling – but those who like it, will love it. And even guests that don’t use it recognize that these services being available is what makes a hotel great.

At the Pestana Palace, and given our Team configuration, we will continue enhancing service and product (experiences, memories, stories). The hotel has a botanic garden with over 300 species, 100 years old. Soon we will organize small trips into it, led by experts for the Lisbon Botanic Academy and by the university. We will identify and catalogue the most relevant trees, so the make the experience as institutional as possible. This also is Niche Story Telling and enhances the hotel experience as a whole.

The road to perfection is a hard one. It never ends, so the pace may never slow down. A journalist once asked me whether my team never gets tired of me. I answered that sometimes I get tired of myself too! But if we don’t move string and fast, others will force us to oblivion. So, we may be tired, but we are producing at the top of our capabilities. I happily try to mix hard-drive American competitiveness and business accumen with European sensitivity and taste. Often hotel managers, like all other people in any other function, simply do what they have to do or are told to do. I want to lift the hotel, my team and myself to the next level. This business and operational mindset is the only one that maximizes value to all stakeholders (and, primarily, to the shareholders). So, being tired or not is not so relevant, at the end of the day.

1. What is your biggest ambition for the hotel?

We have won our awards and recognitions convincingly in the Portuguese market. And we want to continue that. Now our aim is to shine internationally as well. We need more international branding. When a guy from Paris wants to visit Lisbon, we must be top of mind. How to accomplish that? Sales-wise we are already part of the Leading Hotels in the World (LHW). LHW’s motto is: All Kinds of One of a Kind. It is a strong sales-representative consortium. Our wish is to sign up one or two more of these prestigious sales consortia. Virtuoso is an association of ultimate luxury travel agencies/travel advisers. They sell highly select and exclusive hotels. We must get there. It will be a powerful sign to the market.

The Leading Hotels consortium has around 800 service and product standards. We must comply with at least 85% of them. How long does it take before the staff removes my empty cup from the table? Are there flowers on my table? Are the bed cloths ironed well? They will assess us once a year. We are tracking ourselves on a weekly basis (52 times a year). Of course, it demands a highly sophisticated management system and a pretty focused and hands-on Team. We created a Leading Hotel Ambassador (another signature service function only existing at Pestana Palace), out of a member of my personal staff (my Secretary). She controls a team of internal auditors (pivots)and they assess what we (the Operations staff) are doing well or not so well on a on a weekly basis. Last week we did 92% compliance. I will bring this system into my other three hotels – they are more boutique, so we won’t have such an heavy system there, so we are now testing with up to 250 standards, only. These management systems help me manage from a distance, but also helps each member of the Team focus in what’s really important… guest, service, product, value creation and optimization!

.

1. What is your biggest worry?

My biggest worry is: time. There is never enough of it. It’s the scarcest of resources and with the world of possibilities out there, we can never capture all of them or materialize on all of them at all times. So we really need to be focused and go for the opportunities that return maximum value, the fastest possible. And time management also gives me a sense of our competitiveness level in relation to my competitors. If we move faster, odds are we will beat them more often.

1. What do you consider the most important trends in hospitality from the Pestana perspective?

First of all, we do not want to follow the trends, we want to set them in our field. How to do that? I am reading all the relevant newsletters sent out and consequently assess what are the best ideas that we can make our own. Not copying them, but analyzing what can we do to overrun them. Recently, I read that the Ritz Carlton, Chicago is organizing Obama cocktail events versus Romney cocktail events. So now they have a cocktail called Obama, another called Romney. This is a great idea to attract guests, to foster social contact, to create a great atmosphere at the bar as well. Imagine the media buzz it generated! It creates freshness and I ask myself: what can I do which is not copying them, but being inspired by their creativity? I share it all with my team, we discuss these dissues a lot.

For example, when you look at what’s happening in normal hospitality teaching, most of the times students are “designed” to follow trends, not to set them. They are taught to follow best practices, not to make new ones or make existing ones more sophisticated. They also don’t pay much attention to thehotel development world. This is a huge industry operating much before any given hotel opens its doors to the public.

If a hotel manager has a good grip on these subjects, then it’s easier for him/her to understand his/her exact role in managing a given asset and leading his team towards goals set.