Just a month into his appointment as GM of St. Regis Mumbai, Nicholas Dumbell was in for a rude shock when the lockdown was announced travel was suspended in March 2020. Almost overnight, the upscale hotel’s occupancy nosedived from a plus 80% to a less than 10% occupancy. Its five restaurants were able to cater only to in-house guests, and banqueting and social events was completely closed. This was a complete turnaround of the bustling hotel that Nick, as he is fondly called, was used to. Needless to say, it had a huge impact.
He tells us how St. Regis Mumbai turned this tricky corner and is gradually growing now. With the reopening of the hospitality segment, the volume of business has started doubling month-on-month and things are finally looking up.
What strategies did you develop for the continual implementation of sanitation and hygiene at St. Regis Mumbai?
The St. Regis Mumbai has implemented the Marriott-driven commitment to clean, which has come from the company’s Global Cleanliness Council. Professionals in the field of epidemiology, hygiene, food safety and public health, have come up with a comprehensive plan of steps we can take to minimize the risk of infection for our guests.
This includes an electrostatic sprayer, which we now use throughout the hotel, and medical-grade sanitization of all areas. However, the most important thing is our training. We are as strong as our weakest link. Everyone in the team needs to understand what needs to be done and the reason behind it. We clocked up over 1500 hours of training and that really had the biggest impact. We also understand that our biggest challenge now is to ensure that all our guests align themselves with government rules and requirements. They have to respect the rules of social distancing or wearing masks in public areas. While we can remind and keep a watch, it becomes very difficult in the whole nature of hospitality.
However, it needs to be done and is a very important part of our role as custodians of the hotel opening during Unlock 6.0.
How are your customer facing and housekeeping staff trained to maintain high standards of safety and communicate this to guests?
Hospitality is about people and personal touch for guests. One of the biggest concerns for me is that with a mask, guests are unable to see our body language effectively. Hence, we focus on other aspects and have trained and sensitized our team accordingly.
Connecting with customers is the most important facet of our business. We follow all best practices set by the government. If any of our clients hosting an event require more stringent measures to ensure safety for their invitees, we are more than willing to offer suggestions and comply.
We have a combination of the three different types of training, online training, classroom training and probably the most important is the day-to day-training. Teams participate in this for 15 minutes in their departments and ensure that the supervisors and leaders are reinforcing what they learnt in the classroom or online trainings.
Bringing up room occupancy has become a massive challenge for most hoteliers. By when do you expect The St. Regis Mumbai to reach its pre-lockdown figures?
We were plus 80% and went down to 10% at the beginning of lockdown. Because of our apartments, we still had some base. This number is now going up; weekends are at over 50%. We will slowly see it ramp up.
The key question for hoteliers is when the business community will start travelling again. Also, when will corporates allow their teams to come to our city to meet clients or internal stakeholders? These will be the key drivers that will help us hit the pre-lockdown numbers. We need planes in the sky bringing people to this amazing city!
You are right. Business travelers and MICE were amongst the key segments for The St. Regis Mumbai’ revenue. With travel and public gathering restrictions still in place, how are you trying to plug this gap in the hotel’s business chart?
So the big thing right now is staycations. We are seeing that become incredibly popular. During the lockdown, we saw the emergence of ‘Marriott on Wheels’, our company’s food delivery and take-away platform. It was extremely successful and a great boost for the hotel’s F&B segment.
There have been a lot of other ideas that we launched with Marriott International. For example, people working from home have the prospect to secure a work place here at The St. Regis Mumbai. We also created the opportunity for production houses to shoot at our property, which is beneficial to both of us. There are other ideas that will continue to evolve from understanding our potential client’s needs and what we have available at our property.
The big thing right now for The St. Regis Mumbai is staycations.
How is The St. Regis Mumbai leveraging technology to adapt to the new normal and keeping it seamless so that guest experience is not compromised?
The first thing that we need to keep in mind is the safety and comfort of the guest. The idea is to make their experience seamless and evolution of technology allows us to do that. So, we leveraged this with our services, right from the ordering and payment process for delivery, to using the Marriott Bonvoy App for checking into the hotel and for connecting with the famed St. Regis Butler Program, which is so intrinsic to our property.
We have looked at the whole contactless piece and mobile is the way to go. Guests feel a lot more comfortable arranging everything through their own personal handheld devices rather than having to get involved with multiple individuals or touch points.
One of the things that I think is important to recognize in luxury is that people contact is not going to disappear, people still enjoy personalized experiences but in a safe way. Our guests really love our St. Regis Butler Service program, as they can be in contact with one individual and not multiple people. I have been amazed at the number of comments that we’ve received from our guests who’ve come for staycations about the whole Butler Service experience and how effective it is in the current environment.
F&B was a major contributor to The St. Regis Mumbai’s revenues. How is the hotel using technology to create customized menus for its core customers, in a bid to intelligently target this market?
Two key drivers propelled our strategy for F&B revenue. First was the opportunity created during the lockdown where our teams were able to ideate. We have had some great innovations coming out where they have had the opportunity to think out-of-the-box, work on the ideas and put it out there.
The second was the need to build our guest’s confidence and understand their sentiments about stepping out again. The first opportunity helped us with targeting revenue through our Marriott on Wheels delivery and take-away. This is a new revenue stream which hotels had not fully embraced pre-lockdown and will definitely be here to stay. We created some unique experiences in our menu like DIY boxes where with a simple scan you can view our chef showing you how to re-create the dish in the box.
The second aspect allowed us to work on creating the right environment in the hotel. We have the luxury of space. Social distancing with seating was a very viable solution for us unlike stand-alone venues. The St. Regis Mumbai goes back to our founder when we started in 1904 with John Jacob Astor whose primary objective for guests was the requirement for space. Luxury is about space and we already had that in place. So, our guests do not feel like they are sitting too close to each other and still get the same ambience.
Lastly, the most important aspect was leveraging technology for easy choices for our guests. We have QR codes that enable the guests to have a contactless experience and at the same time have the luxury of using a disposable, one-time use physical menu.
All of this was marketed largely through a carefully structured digital medium plan where guests can experience our offerings real-time. There has been a significant growth over the last few months in F&B and I am seeing a steady increase in that segment as we open more venues over the next few months.
