“We are in a very exciting cycle with Aman,” Chief Operating Officer Roland Fasel says. That includes the opening, in November, of the Aman Kyoto, with 24 pavilions and two-bedroom villas. Fasel spilled the beans on a new brand for Aman Resorts Hotels & Residences, how he is reorganizing to hit ambitious growth goals, and what he thinks about disruptors and trends. He joined the company in 2017 from The Dorchester Collection.
HOTELS: The Aman in New York is scheduled to open in late 2020.How are condo sales coming?
Roland Fasel: New York is a challenging environment right now, but I think they have sold over 55%… There is a lot of inventory. They’re still building. It is such a unique building and I think with us as the operators, I think that we should have a little bit more demand as the next guy.
H: What do you think about the movement toward experiential? How are you differentiating?
RF: I think we have done and delivered experiential transformation for 30 years, and long before it actually was in everybody’s vocabulary. The only thing we didn’t do is really claim it… We do give the GMs in the destinations where we operate a lot of freedom to perpetually deliver individualized experiences or experiences which nobody else has access to do, to stay ahead of everybody else claiming that they all of a suddenly want to get into the experiential space. I think today it’s quite interesting that everybody seems to be wanting to get and create stuff which I’m not quite sure always is an experience.
H: You are aiming to have 45 to 48 hotels by 2025.
RF: I feel at the pace we’re going, we definitely can achieve it…We may lose one or two on the way, but I do have a very solid pipeline. The big thing about articulating purpose and values and strategies, and bringing these building blocks into an organization like Aman, (is) to also start talking about the financial responsibility and accountability of senior leaders. At the same time, (being) in the field to continue to pursue the creation of … experiences and that individualized, personalized service proposition.
That’s one of the big challenges running a brand like Aman. As much as you want to bring in some of those building blocks, you need to be careful that you’re not institutionalizing or commoditizing and are at least giving (the GMs) the freedom to perpetuate and innovate… We introduced some of the building blocks like a guest engagement feedback card, which we had never done. I have a method now where I send out some feedback opportunities for guests – but a very simple thing. I ask three questions. Are you going to tell a friend? Are you coming back? What can we do better?
Very simple questions, which for Aman would have, as recently as soon as we started talking about this two years ago, two and a half years ago, everybody was a little bit concerned… You cannot imagine the feedback I get, the narratives I get, the suggestions I get. There is such an incredible engagement, emotional engagement with our guests. If you then really spend time to analyze that, how much great stuff you can get out of some of the feedback.
H: Before your tenure, not a lot of marketing was done, which sometimes affected profitability for owners. Has that changed?
RF: Sales and marketing initially created a more regional and global structure, which I looked at for a year and a half. The last 12 months, I have actually readdressed it and moved a lot of my sales or my individuals responsible for sales and the top line back into the property. We have adjusted this or perpetually, actually, fine-tuned it, but on the big things over the last few years, have moved a lot of the sales managers and (marketing communications) and all these individuals back onto properties or with a significantly smaller cluster regional responsibility. We introduced tools from forecasts, to creating reviews, to proper budgeting processes, to you name it. All these disciplines we have introduced and we are quite focused on the financial responsibility and accountability of my senior members. That is a huge change to how it was run previously and obviously we don’t share numbers, but if you look at 2018 and what came through in ’18 at numbers and growth, I’d say it’s quite sensational.
H: How is everything gelling for you after two years?
RF: I was fortunate enough to get my senior team together very quickly and the right purpose, and articulate the values. We defined the brand pillars. We wrote strategies. Some of those easy low-hanging fruit and quick wins, I was able to implement very quickly… The majority of my inner circle have stuck with it over the last few years. We have done a fantastic job. If the owners feel that we have moved things forward, there is no better proof that we actually are moving in the right direction and satisfying some of the demands of our owners.
H: What’s next on your agenda?
RF: I still have work to optimize the business. I still have an aspiration to really claim that space in the ultra-luxury space around that we should be the benchmark on experiential transformation for travel.
H: How are you responding to disruption and trends like lifestyle brands?
RF: I have decided I’m going to listen to all the disruptors out there. We need to, particularly in the distribution side of things, I definitely have to come significantly more in tune with the digital world – much more aggressive in how we get our hotels out there… Everybody talks about wellness, but we truly try to push that envelope further and further. In Amanpuri (Thailand), we’ve reinvested a lot of money. We brought in a medical part to the entire wellness piece.
I still believe a huge opportunity in one of the other trends, which is multi-generational travel. This is something that has caught my attention. It’s something Aman never played in really as a strategy. We call it ‘discovery centers,’ which is all this with kids, experiences, in what we have created in Puri, what we created in Shanghai, around the culture. It becomes more like knowledge hubs than anything else. Even some of the hotels we are now building, we never recognized the family as to how they would like to stay together. Moving forward, even in design aspects, we will have connecting rooms and stuff like that to accommodate some of this multi-generational travel.
H: What do you think hoteliers are overlooking?
RF: I think you have to be careful that you’re not losing the focus on the customer and the guest… Trying to do whatever you do with the customer as the center of your decision-making process.
H: Any update on a new brand?
RF: It is happening. I can tell you that. (An announcement) will be relatively soon. It’s not just putting another brand on the website. It’s truly real. The reason why we are waiting is because we want to make sure that it has substance.
H: Anything else going on?
RF: I think we are financially in a very good place, so we can really focus on creativity around retail, spa products, events company. We had our first event in Venice around (an event-focused) sub-brand called Atma. It was an aesthetically fantastic event… The production was world-class. We had very, very good sales. It is part of a longer-term strategy… Now we’re contemplating where it’s going next. It’s again, trying something and then seeing if it makes sense, if it adds value.
We are looking at other parts of having some brand extensions without, as I said, jeopardizing the core, which these ideas do add to the brand equity of Aman. Vlad (Doronin, chairman and CEO) is in it to win it. He is driving a lot of those initiatives, and we can move relatively quickly.
