Skift Take
While there is a still a time and place for "white glove" service, even today's highest spending guests are looking for a more curated, personalized version that uses technology to inform better stays.
Editor’s Note: This interview is part of Skift CEO interview series. This particular series is with hospitality CEOs talking about the Future of the Guest Experience and the evolving expectations and demands of hotel guests. Check out all the interviews as they come out here. Check out the previous series on the Future of Travel Booking, with online travel CEOs.
Dubai hotel group Jumeirah is, at times, better recognized for its iconic property inside the Burj al Arab than the brand itself. The group; however, has grown to 22 hotels across 11 countries with plans for more than a dozen more in the works. It also recently announced a second lifestyle brand Venu to offer a more modern guest experience.
Driving this expansion and the brand’s evolution is CEO Nicholas Clayton who has been with brand for two and a half years following an international career built at luxury hotel companies including Viceroy, Mandarin Oriental, Ritz-Carlton, and Four Seasons.
Clayton recognizes his brand’s potential to emanate worldwide from the heart of tourism growth in the Middle East and is acutely aware of guests’ changing definition of luxury. He pulls inspiration from both his new home in Dubai and his travels including a recent trip to New York City where his described the restaurant’s buzzy but casual vibe as an ambiance he’d like to aim for.
Below is an edited interview with Clayton about the blending of luxury and lifestyle guest experiences:
Skift: What are the biggest challenges you face today when it comes to improving the guest experience?
Nicholas Clayton: We are really asking ourselves what we need to add as it relates to guest experience. In some ways, we’re also asking ourselves what we need to subtract. Our tagline has become “Jumeirah: Stay Different” and the intent there is to celebrate the difference in our customers, how they use the hotels, the different architectures, and interior designs. Our hotels don’t look the same in any two locations and there is something unique about the experience of staying in each of our hotels.
For example, the Madinat Jumeirah is an Arabian-themed hotel. It has a series of canals and people take a water taxi from spot to spot. We’re just lucky because the people responsible for designing the hotel put a unique feature there, and no one else in Dubai has that. Our “Stay Different” brand means, to us, having being memorable whether it’s in Frankfu
