You cannot only be a GM – you need to be an artist, a shrink, a doctor and a confidant, and also make money, says Andrea Natal, GM of Belmond Copacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro.
Like many Brazilians, this extrovert loves a party, and yes, she is looking forward to the Belmond-owned hotel’s Carnaval party on February 6. This has been an annual event since 1994, re-started by what was then Orient-Express, which had bought the 241-room property in 1989.
‘2016 will see even more parties and special events’, she predicted. ‘The Copa’ was instrumental in Rio’s winning bid for the Olympics, taking place August 5-21. Nearly all inventory is taken by the International Olympic Committee and there are two sizeable delegations inhouse. They will dine in banqueting rooms, so what to do about hotel restaurants?
‘42% of our profits come from food and drink, the all-day Michelin-starred Pérgula, Michelin-starred MEE Pan-Asian with Ken Hom, and our Italian restaurant Cipriani. We cannot afford to lose all that income’, she said. As always, she found a solution. Philipp Mosimann, one of two sons of Anton Mosimann, the London-based Swiss legend who has been catering Olympics events since Tokyo in 1964, will run a Mosimann’s pop-up in Pérgula.
Andrea Natal is always creating. She leads a group of 20 singers, whose day jobs are all top-notch among Rio’s professionals, including politicians. The group sings at always-packed out galas to benefit an orphanage – the GM brought some kids to the hotel, and then purchased their drawings of it to give as Christmas gifts. When Belmond’s best-performing travel advisors were hosted in May 2015, participants were treated to make-believe Olympics, with staff as loudly cheering supporters, before sunrise cocktails at the statue of Christ the Redeemer.
‘My favorite experiences are around theater, and surprise’, said Andrea Natal laughing. At Carnaval 2015 she had musicians mingling anonymously with the 1,800 guests, all in appropriate costume. One musician started playing, another, in a different part of the area, joined in, and soon all around were dancing. This year’s Carnaval, in honor of the Olympics, is themed for ancient Greece. What surprises will she come up with? More than 100 media publications would like to be invited but to avoid intruding on the privacy of VIPs who want to enjoy themselves without images subsequently appearing, they are fed real-time photos of what is going on.
But it is not all about singin’ and dancin’. 2015, a difficult year with the oil collapse, and Brazil’s politics, closed at 65% average occupancy – 2.6 nights’ average stay, 33% of total business domestic – but she came in over budget. Andrea Natal is determined, also, to surprise cynics and show that business will not slacken off once the Olympics are over. For the past six months she has been president of the unusually active and dynamic Rio Convention & Visitors Bureau. With the exchange rate now 4 Brazilian reals to the US dollar, there has never been a better time to be in Rio. ‘Another great time to be here is for New Year, and its party on Copacabana Beach, just outside the hotel. Guests used to be roughly half and half, Brazilians and others, but now the mix is 70% foreign with masses of Americans’, she shared.
Always wanting to travel, this 35-year industry veteran studied hotel management in her native Rio before joining Le Méridien Rio de Janeiro. She later moved 100 yards along Copacabana Beach to Copacabana Palace, but since her late husband was still with Méridien, she followed him, to Méridiens in St-Martin, Seychelles and Paris. But she was homesick. ‘Without telling him, I later bought tickets for myself and our baby son, plus the nanny, to return to Brazil’, she recalled. Copacabana Palace’s then-boss, Philip Carruthers, wanted her back, and after 20 years she is still there. Along her professional way she has survived breast cancer and turned to serious cycling, both at her weekend home two hours’ drive from Rio, and within the city center. Her mentors remain Carruthers, plus, from Le Méridien days, François Ducret, who taught her elegance, and the importance of detail.