Michael Karam
Daily Star staff
May 3, 2000
When the $75 million Beirut Marriott Hotel opened in Jnah in June 1996, critics sneered. The area wasn’t fashionable;
it was too out of the way, too drab.
Five years later, the Marriott is enjoying 75 percent occupancy. It has consistently reached its profit targets
and at the end of 1999 it was named the highest rated of all the International Marriott hotels. No mean achievement
in a country where the hotel sector is still adapting to ways of the international chains.
“I was at a conference in Germany with a whole bunch of other Marriott executives when the news was flashed up
on the screen,” said Sam Ibrahim, the hotel’s general manager.
Apart from joy, the news set off a personal flashback to the time when Ibrahim almost turned down the Beirut job
in favor of a seemingly more glamorous post in New York. His wife stepped in, convincing him that he would regret
it if someone else were to open the first Marriott in Lebanon.
Still, events almost proved her wrong when Israel launched its Grapes of Wrath assault in the spring of 1996, bombing
south Beirut.
“There was nothing in the Marriott manual about how to handle bombings,” said Ibrahim.
The Marriott opened two months later and today, along with the healthy occupancy, it hosts an average of three
conferences and corporate functions each day. This may come as a surprise to those who felt that the hotel would
fall victim to some of the newer, glitzier, more centrally located hotels. So far, however, good public relations
and canny marketing have ensured Marriott its slice of the market.
“We’re taking customers from Dubai and Egypt," said Ibrahim, a 26-year industry veteran who learned his trade
in the feisty New York market. “We must be doing something right.”
But Ibrahim is realistic. The Marriott ruled unchallenged for nearly four years. While he says he welcomes competition,
he is aware that with the arrival of the brand names, the battle for customers will become more vicious. There
are now Meridiens, Inter-Continentals, Holiday Inns, Sofitels and Sheratons, all with their logos blinking on the
Beirut skyline, all eager to hold conferences and host corporate banquets.
Ibrahim has the stomach for the fight. He insists that the market is not saturated by upper-range hotels as long
as those hotels can increase demand. “Instead of saying there isn’t enough pie to go around we need to make a bigger
pie,” he argued. “We have five hotels in Cairo and no one is saying we have too many.”
Ibrahim remembers the brand inspection with a smile. But at the time he knew his hotel and his reputation
was at risk.
“The inspector arrives unannounced as a guest and begins making note of every detail,” Ibrahim explained. “He registers
whether the hotel operator uses his name when he calls. He checks the room; under the bed, in the wardrobe, everywhere.”
On the second day the inspector introduces himself to the manager and the two go on a comprehensive tour of the
hotel: “He visits the kitchens, noting the water temperature; makes sure the food is labeled and dated correctly
and that the locker room is clean. It’s a very intense inspection; he even goes to the garages.”
Ibrahim puts his hotel’s success down to training, training, and more training. “We treat our associates as assets
and when we hire we don’t look at what a person is, we look at what he can be,” the manager said. “We also empower
our staff to make decisions. Too many times in Lebanon we see people unable to take the initiative because his
superior is not available. Here we want them to make decisions and if they foul up then we learn from those mistakes.”
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