Q&A: The Peninsula Hotels' Gareth Roberts on the future of city travel
With 10 properties located in key global cities, The Peninsula Hotels has felt the full force of Covid-19. As work continues to re-open the collection, the company’s group director of brand, Gareth Roberts, tells Aspire how a focus on flexibility, guest experience and local communities has been the formula for success in rebuilding hospitality and city travel.
What is the current status of The Peninsula Hotel portfolio in light of Covid-19?
Our properties in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing have remained open the entire time following various government guidelines and restrictions. Tokyo was closed for a little while, but they’re now open with certain restrictions. In North America, New York regretfully is still closed but we look forward to opening that some time in the summer. We reopened Chicago in July last year and Beverly Hills remained open the entire time, albeit heavily restricted at times. Paris is scheduled to reopen on March 1 and both Bangkok and Manila have done phased re-openings.
All ten hotels in the portfolio are city-based. Has the pandemic threatened the city break model?
Part of our business model is to develop hotels in gateway cities. While we understand that many travellers may desire the outdoors for perhaps their first trip, gateway cities such as Hong Kong, Tokyo, London and Paris will remain relevant not only as tourist destinations, but for business travellers as well. We believe that the demand for luxury city hotel accommodations remains for the international traveller, whether it is adding on a few extra days for themselves after a business trip, as a stopover city to an island resort destination or simply wanting to visit these historical cities for their rich cultures, food and art scene.
What has a return to city breaks looked like so far?
We’ve been quite fortunate in many locations that we've had great support from the local community. We've been doing quite a lot of Peninsula ‘Fare at Home’, which is good for the staff as it keeps up morale and means they're still able to serve guests, albeit from afar. We’ve been able to welcome guests back into the rooms [in some locations], with staycations being quite positive in some places. In Hong Kong, for example, we do quite well with that business. The Hong Kong people love hotels, and for many this is an opportunity for them to experience them when perhaps normally they wouldn't.
Our initial response when this terrible pandemic came upon us was obviously the safety of our guests and staff. That was paramount, so we spent the first few months really focusing on our hygiene and safety protocols and putting a dedicated health and hygiene manager at each location.
Then we really turned ourselves to the guest experience. As travellers were returning - whether they be local or international - they wanted to have a sense of normalcy and Peninsula service, so we wanted to really look at how we move that forward. We launched the Peninsula Promise in the fourth quarter of last year and that involves various elements, one of them being Peninsula Time which is our flexible check in and check out programme.
It’s something that we have been doing for a number of years at the Peninsula Beverly Hills with quite some success, allowing our guests to tell us what time they would like to arrive or depart based on what their travel plans are. It was so well received, both by the actual guests themselves but also the travel industry, so with that success we said, ‘let's do this globally’ and that is now what we've launched. The initial response has been really wonderful. The support from the travel industry, media and our guests has been: ‘This is something that should have been done a long time ago and kudos to the Peninsula Hotels for being the first one to do it.’
Aside from your service changes, you’ve also got a number of new openings on the horizon. Can you tell us a little bit more about these?
London, Istanbul and Yangon are our three hotels under development. We believe London will be opening some time in the middle of next year. Construction continues at a very positive pace on site. We're finalising all of our food and beverage concepts at the moment and we will also have the Peninsula Residences [there], so it's going to be a really exciting project for us and we're very much looking forward to coming to London. It’s a city we’ve been wanting to open a hotel in for many years. We had just been waiting for the right timing and the right opportunity and that came along a few years ago.
We’re hoping to open Istanbul in the latter part of next year. Construction continues very well there. It's a very large piece of land that we are developing. It's four buildings - three heritage buildings and a fourth brand new construction. It's located along the Bosporus with some beautiful, lush landscaping around it so there's a lot of work to be done but it's going to be a stunning hotel.
Are there any other destinations the brand has its eye on?
We’re always looking for new opportunities. For the time being we want to really focus on opening these three new hotels; they’re big investments for us because we don't just manage them, we actually have ownership of the real estate. In London, we are 100% owner of the real estate and our landlord is the Grosvenor Estate so that's a significant investment for us. But we always have our eye open for good opportunities, one never knows.
How important is the UK travel trade to Peninsula?
We can't underestimate the importance of it. We absolutely understand the value of the travel industry. Particularly at our level, ultra-luxury travellers really rely on the guidance of very good travel advisors, particularly now because they want the assurance of somebody who is perhaps a little bit more connected to the industry to say, ‘you can feel confident and comfortable travelling’. The UK market is so incredibly important to us as a brand globally. Each of our hotels has a significant portion of UK guests and I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future at all. British people very much love to travel. That spirit of adventure and travel is still there.
We very much appreciate all that the travel industry has done for us over the years and we can't wait to be in the offices thanking people once again face to face and looking towards the future. Because there is a bright future there, we just know it's going to take a little while. But we're slowly seeing some positive things with vaccination rates, particularly in the UK and certain other places, so hopefully we'll be looking in a much better place in a short while.
How do you support and educate travel agents in selling Peninsula product?
Our sales and marketing team both in Hong Kong and around the world have been doing a lot of engagement with the travel community to really keep them abreast of what we're doing. This is also to just stay connected; it's important that we maintain relationships at this terrible time. In many parts of the world people have not been to the office for nine or 12 months, they haven’t seen their colleagues or a friendly face from a hotel company stopping by and that was such a big part of their lives. So we have to maintain that connection, albeit virtually.
We've done some wonderful webinars in the past few months. We did one for Chinese New Year a few weeks ago where our teams in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing did a lesson about the history of celebrating the Chinese New Year and that was really well received. It was educational and fun and from the feedback that we got it was very heart-warming. We will certainly continue to do those sorts of things.
What do you think the future holds for the luxury travel industry?
This is the big question. I stay in touch with several guests and from what I hear from them, absolutely [it’s going to bounce back]. Of course, we have a long way to go. It’s been such a terrible time for the travel industry, and you can't imagine it not taking several years to come back. There is the pent-up demand there, but there's been so many challenges that people have gone through, whether they be economic, psychological or health related. But I do believe that spirit to travel and the spirit of adventure is absolutely innate in humans and therefore it will come back, it will just take a few years.
What travel trends are you currently seeing at Peninsula in light of the pandemic?
I think it would be hard to say if what we're seeing now is a trend or not because our hotels are all operating in such a different manner than they normally have. It’s been wonderful that we're connecting more with our local communities who are now staying with us, not just dining with us, so there are certainly trends related to that. But I think once international borders start to reopen and we see long haul travel return, the key is flexibility and that's what we're doing a lot of training on with our teams at the moment. For people who are going to start travelling long haul after they haven't done so for over two years, they may have a lot of apprehensions and concerns and [it’s about] how as hosts do we make those guests feel comfortable to return.
What does the word luxury mean to you?
What might have been the most valued things in luxury are now going to change for a lot of people. It’s going to be about privacy, space, the sense of wellbeing and the sense of calm that one gets from knowing they are somewhere where they completely trust that they are safe. And it's going to be very different for everybody. For some people, they just can't wait to get back on a plane. They don’t want to hear a word about sanitation and this, that and the other, they just want to return to normal. For some people, that's going to be the number one topic and they're going to want full assurance before they're willing to step back into our hotels. It's understanding what it means to each individual traveller. Now it will be much more about the individual approach to each guest and what’s important to him or her. It's all about really offering a bespoke experience to each guest and understanding what their wants, needs and desires are during this unique time.