Orascom Developments’ boss on post-pandemic hospitality
As he gears up to mark one year as chief executive officer of Orascom Hotels Management (OHM), Stuart Leven sits down with leading travel and hospitality management consultancy Pace Dimensions to consider his first year – and the future of hospitality
One thing people can’t say about Stuart Leven is that he doesn’t know his own mind.
The Scottish-born businessman was vice president of commercials for the UK and Ireland at InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) for just over three years – before walking away to spend six months travelling around Morocco and Europe in a VW camper van with his wife and sons, then aged 10 and eight respectively.
“At the time, we could think of 10 reasons why we shouldn’t, but not one reason why we couldn’t,” he reflects.
Leven’s nomadic stint came to a halt in 2013 when Royal Caribbean decided to knock on his door. That being said he took some convincing to join the cruise giant, having long been convinced that holidays at sea weren’t for him.
But the Royal Caribbean team succeeded in converting him and Leven rejoined the corporate world spending eight years with the cruise giant occupying various roles – including vice-president EMEA and UK and Ireland managing director.
The Scot chose to step down, during the height of Covid, to assist with the repatriation of cruise passengers and crew.
He followed this up with a stint consulting on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and was enjoying picking and choosing his work projects (and hours) when Orascom Hotels Management (OHM) – a subsidiary of Orascom Development, a Swiss-based company specialising in ccreating destinations where people are inspired to live, work, and play with passion and purpose – came calling in September 2023.
On the day we speak over Zoom – Leven from his home in Petersfield, Hampshire – the sky is blue and there’s barely a cloud in sight.
The 56-year-old is clearly in good spirits as he sits down for his first interview with Pace Dimensions after nearly a year into his role as CEO at OHM, and not just because of the weather.
“We have six destinations, 34 hotels, and plenty of developments in the pipeline. That’s the journey and it’s a really exciting one to be part of,” he beams.
“OHM have always run their hotels well but what they weren’t doing was running them as an estate – they were running them as individual units in destinations. So my role was to come in and take an estate view. And I’m having a great time! ”
The importance of cultural diversity
Not only is Leven enjoying his work, he’s finding it hugely rewarding as he explains: “It’s been an incredible learning experience from a cultural perspective.
“I’ve worked in the Middle East before but not in Egypt which is very different from say Oman. You have to understand the cultural variances. Then you throw Lustica [Montenegro, where Orascom manages The Chedi] into the mix…
“Fundamentally we also build things – we are a real estate company – and I’ve not been too involved in that side before so that’s been an eye opener too.
“The key thing is this is a very strong successful company, set up by an incredibly entrepreneurial man [Onsi Sawiris] who had the vision to create these amazing destinations, and what it is trying to do is to get even stronger and evolve to the next level.”
Build it and they will come
So how does Leven see the evolution of OHM? “We want to grow in all three regions – in Europe where we have Andermatt and Luštica Bay; in Egypt where we have El Gouna, which accounts for 50 per cent of our turnover, as well as Taba – and then we have the Middle East. Each destination is at a different level of maturity but there is scope for us to grow within every development.”
“And then you have to understand what helps you grow. We are looking very closely at the customers we have today as well as the customers we think we could provide with a great vacation tomorrow. It’s not a repositioning, it’s an evolution.
“That evolution could be introducing more premium products into the destinations or working with airlines and operators to open up new markets to feed into the destinations.
“These are all areas we are looking at and in discussions about developing because we recognise that as we grow, and as the estate gets larger, we won’t be getting more of the same type of guests we receive today. Those guests will always be important, of course, but we will be looking for a new type of customer as we go forward.
When pressed for an example, Leven cites Andermatt as a case in point.
“ In Andermatt, we have The Chedi which is an absolute cathedral of a hotel in terms of how it is built, its service proposition, its location and strategic importance to that part of Switzerland. It’s just the most beautiful hotel.
“And then you have a mountain that is evolving quite quickly with Vail coming in and taking over the running of skiing in winter. We are also looking at a championship golf course for summer so as to develop every sports facility.
“We then need to look and see who are the customers for all these facilities and what opportunity do we have to grow – and that lends itself to the type of hotel development we are looking at going forward.
“It’s essential to take a holistic view in terms of who would really benefit, and what sort of products. We need to continue to create these heartbeats not just for hotel guests but also for the residents.”
The rise of working remotely
Another priority for Leven and OHM are digital nomads – a new generation of mobile workers that have traded cubicles for cafes, and offices for hotel rooms all around the world, blurring the line between work and play more than ever.
OMH, with Leven at the helm, understands the importance of offering business-meets-leisure experiences where the emphasis is on technology, communal spaces and networking opportunities.
“We are focusing very heavily on digital nomads,” concurs Leven. “I always tell the story of an ESG firm I work with which hires graduates, who are very talented individuals all focused on making a difference to the planet we live in.
“But to be an employer of choice, they allow team members to work overseas for a year – they are still doing their day job but from a different location. And that’s becoming a growing trend.
“So we need to change and make amendments and enhancements to our product offering that recognises digital nomads. There’s no point in us saying come to Casa Cook El Gouna – we’ll provide you with an amazing workspace where you can work, have a chat with other digital nomads,, make your zoom calls, have a coffee – if we don’t have the bandwidth to do that!”
How the pandemic has changed the way people travel
Digital nomads aside, Leven is targeting an older demographic who want to make up for lost time – having spent two years stuck at home during the pandemic – but who have ticked off “all the honeypot destinations.”
Leven elaborates: “They’ve seen the pyramids and visited Sydney Opera House, the Leaning Tower of Pisa et al. Now they want to deep dive into Berber culture in the desert or visit remote islands in the Indian Ocean.
“And these are experiences that, because of our scale, size and flexibility, we can provide. OHM has always been about getting people out the door of our destinations to go out and explore and experience the wider regions.
“It’s all about authenticity. If you visit Andermatt and want a true Swiss experience, we’ll send you to a local restaurant for fondue. If you arrive at our Lustica Bay property, you’ll want to venture into one of the small fishing villages and enjoy fish fresh out of the water. You’re certainly not going to head into the main square to get a McDonalds!”
Sustaining success
He’s also vocal about sustainability and has pushed hard to get OHM and, indeed the entire hospitality industry, to dramatically increase its sustainability efforts. “When I came in, one of the key areas I identified that we could bring some best practice to was around Environmental, Social, and Governance [ESG],” he explains.
“So we hired an ESG director to come and join us and make sure that our impact is a positive one – that our employee experience makes us an employer of choice; that our footprint is as low as it can be; that we give something back.
“When we audited, and we audited early, we found we had some hotels that you really would put up there as best in class and others that were still on a journey but every hotel is on a journey which is a great thing.
“We are working with the accreditation body Green Key so that by the end of year, every one of our hotels will be GK accredited so that’s really good as it not only gives you accreditation but a development plan.”
“There are some really obvious things we have done, for example, moving to glass bottles in all rooms.
“However the key thing we are undertaking is the training of all 4,500 business staff. That is where we are starting. We are training 4,500 business staff so they understand what they can do to make a difference in the workplace every single day and what they can do when they go home.
“The other thing I will say as well that absolutely amazes me is that every day of the year we have a hotel somewhere doing something for the local community.
“It could be anything from Andermatt where our Radisson hotel has a 25m swimming pool which we open up for school kids a couple of times of week and staff help with swimming lessons to Taba where one of our properties runs an organic farm that’s not just for hotel guests but for locals.”
The customer experience
It’s OHM’s refusal to rest on its laurels that can be attributed to much of its success and is why Leven has instructed his team to start “looking at the whole customer journey.”
He continues: “You need to begin when the customer is dreaming about the next holiday. When they are visiting Trip Advisor and review sites, when they are looking at friends’ Instagram pages.
“And you need to make sure that your digital capability allows you to land in the right place with the right messages at the right time when people are in that dream stage.
“And then you need to enhance as they go from dreaming to consideration to buying right up to the time when they arrive at their destination and go home and begin to think about their next holiday.
“You need to understand how best to communicate what distribution channels to use in order to do that. And critically, personalisation of the message to them.
“A real example which I learnt from my cruise days – in cruise for every dollar we made from selling a vacation, we made another 20 cents from selling other items – is that you don’t have to wait until guests arrive.
“So my briefing to the team has been that between customers making a commitment to us to come on vacation regardless of destination, there is a window of opportunity to offer them many areas to enhance that vacation ahead of their arrival.
“We just need to make sure we give them the chance to do that, and that, as we have a closer understanding of guests, we evolve our product and service proposition and portfolio of what we offer as well. It all pulls together. The whole journey focuses on the lifetime journey of guests rather than seeing them as a single transaction. It’s a key mind-shift shift.”
Last word
How does he find the time for it all? “The fact that I am working across multiple time zones might have something to do with it! My day starts very early and you know, in Egypt, the working week starts on a Sunday. [The rest of the Middle East is now aligned with the Western world.]
“Businesses are always on – especially in hospitality. We have millions of customers who visit 365 days a year so there is no switch off. What keeps me up is this: Can we move quickly enough to maximise opportunities?
Having spent some time in his company, we’re willing to bet that if anyone can, it’s Leven and OHM.
Stat-pack
Name: Stuart Leven
Company: Orascom Hotels Management
Designation: CEO
Nationality: British
Brief bio: Leven joined Orascom Hotels Management (OHM) as CEO in September 2023. Orascom Hotels Management is a subsidiary of Switzerland-based Orascom Development. It has destinations in Egypt (El Gouna and Taba Heights), the UAE, Oman, Montenegro, and Switzerland. Leven was the vice president of commercials for the UK and Ireland at InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). He also has experience in the airline and cruise industry, where he was the vice president of EMEA for Royal Caribbean Group.
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