“Our welcome ambassador, Mara, definitely brings guests back – children especially rush in to see her,” says Jean-François Laurent, general manager of the 293-room Anantara Dubai Palm Jumeirah Resort & Spa, Dubai.
Mara, a 4-year-old peregrine falcon, is on duty every day. She mostly sits patiently on the arm of her handler, a tall local Emirati man clad in typical gear, headscarf and full-length white robe.
The pair’s work hours, detailed in the hotel’s contract with the relevant supplier, are 7 a.m. to noon, and 4 to 7 p.m. Other than those times, Mara is back in the desert, flying free or sleeping. The supplier is responsible for insurance, although Mara is also written into the hotel’s cover.
“She is actually a wild animal, but she is so well looked after that she behaves like a pet. She certainly does not mind hotel guests holding her and taking endless photos to post, though she always appreciates payment in the form of miniscule pellets of pigeon meat that the handler keeps in his pocket,” said Laurent.
The welcome ambassador is not the only incongruity at this beach-set resort. As well as a standard two-floor bedroom block, there are 18 Thai-style individual villas, set around a significant man-made lake. “Our owner, a local sheikh, has a great passion for Thailand,” explained Laurent, adding that his 609-strong workforce includes 32 lifeguards.
Laurent arrived for his interview, three months before the hotel’s 2013 opening, on one of his six motorbikes. Did the sheikh realize he was hiring a food-passionate Frenchman with a considerable degree of creativity?
In 2016, the hotel made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for producing, in one go, 6,241 pounds of mango-flavored sticky rice, which subsequently fed 8,000, including 7,000 local laborers, and people in hospitals or orphanages. In 2018, Laurent, in collaboration with his Irish executive chef, Maurice Fitzgerald, produced “A Culinary Journey,” a really outstanding, and useful, cookbook, sold in the hotel’s boutique.
“It is essential, both for regular guests and to motivate my team, continually to have projects,” he explained. One such idea was turning a first-floor office, which conveniently happened to have glass walls and a door leading to the main outside street, into Revo, an all-day café.
Home-designed, it has non-matching furniture, but strong and complimentary WiFi. On average, Revo does 80 breakfasts, 100 lunches and 100 dinners. Business comes from value-seeking guests in nearby hotels, plus locals, both Emiratis and expats.
“Everything helps awareness of our property, and helps fill bedrooms. A range of dining options, which include day or evening picnics out on a boat, also contribute to the fact that 40% of our rooms business is local staycations, and 22% of the total is repeat – average stay is six nights.”
It seems that there are always wow moments at Anantara Dubai Palm Jumeirah Resort & Spa. Arrive at Bushman’s Restaurant and Bar, for instance, and you may be offered a glass of chilled Imajyne wine – it’s blue, the color of a cornflower (this seems to be a Corsican specialty).
The Laurent philosophy is that although it is impossible to calculate the monetary return on investment in, say, hiring Mara the welcome ambassador, everything adds up to perception of the property.
“And our social media and TripAdvisor postings really benefit,” he added.