Selma Roth

Saudi Gazette

He arrives exactly on time in the hotel lobby. Average posture, a friendly smile on his face, he proposes to sit outside and enjoy the weather, which is not so pleasant despite the time of the year. The actual reason he prefers the picture-perfect terrace overlooking the Red Sea rather than the air-conditioned lobby becomes clear as soon as we sit down and he asks the waiter for his cigar.



Ashwini Kumar, who originally hails from North India, has just completed three months as the Park Hyatt general manager in Jeddah. Prior to coming to the Kingdom, he lived in Emirates, first working at various Hyatt hotels in Dubai, and then launching the Hyatt Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi. Kumar put body and mind into the Capital Gate project, and it is clear that his heart is still there, from the fact he sent his pastry chef to learn a specific dessert to the HR director he is bringing to Jeddah to help him recruit staff. “It’s a very special hotel for me,” he says with a reminiscing twinkle, not only because he opened it, but also because of its architecture and the staff. “That’s what I miss. The problem here is getting staff, visas — all that is not very easy to attract people. And then the ladies cannot work.” The general manager hopes the latter will change soon: “It will help the whole industry.”



However, Kumar is not entirely new to the Kingdom. He started his career in the hotel industry as a bell captain at the Dammam Oberoi Hotel, currently Sheraton, in January 1981. “I was 21 years old and was studying English literature.” Planning to become an English professor, Kumar noticed the ad in the paper and decided to apply and live in the Kingdom for a period of two years. Following his job at the concierge, he worked as a health club receptionist, at the business center, reservation, reception. The two years he was planning to live abroad have become 33 years. Not planning to return to his home country any time soon — “I feel more Arab than Indian” — Kumar has pretty much occupied all positions in the hotel industry prior to becoming general manager, and uses this experience in his daily work.



While working in Dammam, Kumar used to travel regularly to Dubai to watch and play cricket. During one such trip, he decided to walk into the Hyatt Regency, and in 1989 he joined that company. “Then we opened the Grand Hyatt in Dubai,” he continues, after which he became the general manager in Egypt’s Sharm El Sheikh Hyatt for a short term. However, his heart lay in the Gulf, and he returned shortly to open the Hyatt Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi.



Returning to the Kingdom after 24 years means Kumar is able to see all the changes this country has witnessed. “Saudi has changed,” he affirms, pointing to the fact that a man and woman could not have been sitting and talking together 24 years ago. Besides that, the cities have expanded massively. Where his Oberoi Hotel used to overlook the sea when it was built, “now this hotel is in the middle of the city”. Other developments he saw were the establishment of Jubail Industrial City and the opening of the bridge to Bahrain. “The whole country has grown up.”



As a result of this, the hotel industry has changed as well. “A city like Alkhobar has got a lot of hotels now,” he says, while when he was working in Dammam there were only four five-star properties in the three cities of Alkhobar, Dammam and Dhahran.



“In those days there was also only 1 TV channel,” Kumar continues, “which was Channel 2. We were lucky in Dammam — we used to put a big antenna so we could catch Bahrain and the UAE.” Back then, learning Arabic was “a must”, according to the GM, who used to be pretty fluent in Arabic but stopped practicing while working in the UAE. “We had a teacher, because in those days, in 1981, not many local people would speak to you in English.”



Another obvious change the country is currently going through concerns Saudization and the status correction campaign. “I think once this visa issue is resolved and all these people legalized I think it’s a good step the government has done this,” he says about the campaign. “We used a lot of outsource staff and now we’re restricted to do that. It will take time to stabilize the market.” For the time being, however, his hotel has to live with the difficulty of finding qualified staff, which creates a lot of uncertainty, according to the general manager.



Kumar is also fairly positive about the Saudization efforts the country is making. “We’re managing, but we’re still not finding enough people for this industry,” he says, indicating the forthcoming change to a five-day working week would make it considerably easier to attract locals. “I’m ready to start (the five-day working week), but we need the manpower to do that,” he comments. One of the most challenging parts of his job in Jeddah is to keep his staff happy while simultaneously having satisfied guests. “My most challenging job is to get the right people, which was not the case in Dubai.” According to him, standards here are not yet comparable to Dubai, and it all comes down to having the right manpower. “Once I got that part done, then my job becomes very easy.”



Despite these difficulties, Kumar is determined to find Saudi employees. He went to the hotel school at King Abdulaziz University (KAU) to meet the dean and hire students, who get to work closely with the general manager and are offered practical, on-job training as well as insider information about the hotel business. “It is good. It had to happen. It’s their country and they need to get the opportunity to work,” he opines about Saudization, admitting it takes time to change people’s mindset into believing they can actually have a career in the hospitality industry rather than seeing it as a temporary occupation. “We have to give them that feeling that this is an industry where you can have a career and make a living out of it. You can become a director. You can become a GM. So to attract the right people and then make them develop is our job together with these institutes.”



Developing people is at the core of Kumar’s profession as a general manager. It is also the side of his position he is most passionate about. He believes human capital is a company’s biggest asset. In the end, “It is not the building that is going to make a difference; it’s the service guests get.” And while at the moment, Jeddah has more demand than it has good hotels available, meaning guests would return even if the service is not impeccable, this may change in the near future, “and we should not forget that,” Kumar stresses.



Hence the importance of developing people and strive for a flawless operation of the hotel. And Kumar is a perfectionist at that. He is candid enough to tell an employee he should have shaved this morning, and spent no less than two months at Park Hyatt Jeddah when he arrived here to live the experience of the hotel guests, which gave him a lot of insider information. “I love meeting people; I love solving their problems; I love my staff, and my job is to have a solution, so I love to assist them wherever is needed,” whether that is serving diners at the restaurant or receiving guests at the reception. “I’m not the guy that likes to work from the office. I’m more on the field, because the more you meet the guests the more you learn firsthand.”



Apart from assisting his staff, Kumar enjoys the small changes he is making in the hotel — from bringing in flowers at the reception to a new seating area outside overlooking the Red Sea, and from adding a partition to the mosque to introducing a new signature dessert — Kunafa with an Italian twist — from the 18 Degrees restaurant at Hyatt Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi.



Usually, Kumar’s day starts at 8:30 a.m., when he arrives at the hotel and takes his rounds, followed by several meetings from 9:30 a.m. onwards. Once those are finished, he starts meeting guests, handwriting personal welcoming notes to VIPs, taking his rounds again, checking the functions for the day — from business meeting to royal weddings. “There are a lot of challenges and the day never ends,” he says, adding he often takes his last rounds at 10 or even 11 p.m.  And whenever the GM has a gap, he reads the papers, because his day is “not complete without reading them.”



Despite this busy schedule, Kumar would not call himself a workaholic: “This is what I like, and I cannot think of doing anything else,” he says, adding that as long as you enjoy your job it does not feel like work. “I feel every day is a different opportunity and a different challenge.”



Kumar is aware that he wouldn’t have had this career if it wasn’t for the support of his wife. “It’s very, very important to have the right partner, and I think she suffered a lot from me not being there every time,” he admits. “She has been a tremendous help for me.”



And with that, Kumar decides that the sun is getting too hot. He returns his cigar to the waiter and walks past the lobby to the restaurant, where he will have his lunch while simultaneously keeping a hawk’s eye on the staff. The general manager likes to be in control and aspires nothing less than an impeccable service. Perhaps the only change he wished he could also make is to increase the number of rooms. With 142 rooms, Park Hyatt Jeddah is often fully booked. During weekdays it mainly serves as a business hotel, while on the weekend families — mostly from Riyadh — come for the hotel spa and the Red Sea. “I wish we had more rooms, because the demand is here. Jeddah still needs more hotels.”



Recently, the company decided to open two more Hyatt properties in the city, the Grand Hyatt and the Hyatt Regency, “but it will take another couple of years.” Hyatt is also opening a hotel in Makkah and in Riyadh next year.