Hospitality Management Holdings (HMH) held its first meeting of vice
presidents at Coral Julia Dumna Hotel in Aleppo earlier this week. The
high level delegation was led by the group’s CEO Michel Noblet and
included top executives from the management.
The key objective of the conference was to primarily take stock of the magnitude of the ongoing global recession and to map the group’s development and marketing strategy in the current economic scenario. “None of our objectives have changed because of the crisis. Our business model is extremely robust. As a result, our performance has been globally satisfactory. We can say that so far we have been through the crunch without any injury,” Noblet said while outlining HMH’s 2009 global objectives.
“However, the economic outlook is serious. We have been hit by delays in some of our projects. Also, the market is moving more slowly this quarter. The leisure segment has been more hard hit. We have seen a drop of 15 to 20 in the average room rates. Hence urgent steps are needed to alleviate the situation. On the whole we continue to be optimistic because we have compelling products, he added.
Noblet hopes to make up for any slowdown in the coming months by continuing to expand aggressively. “We expect the rate of new room openings to remain strong. We have a hotel opening practically every three weeks in 2009. This will help us to get ready for the good times.”
In terms of sales and marketing a truly integrated approach is the way forward. “We have got to evaluate our existing policies and explicitly focus on enhancing visibility. Cooperation is the key to stay competitive. We are soon going to introduce a variety of attractive promotions and products across our properties. In these straitened times it is more important than ever to get more out of your present customers. On the other hand, emerging markets will continue to drive growth. Hence there’s need to define a broad strategy that would involve tapping both existing and fresh markets,” he said.