Crowne Plaza Riyadh RDC: General Manager Fady Sawaya Discusses Hospitality and Tourism in Saudi Arabia

Interview with Fady Sawaya, Area General Manager at IHG for Riyadh Central and Eastern Province and General Manager for Crowne Plaza RDC

How do you assess the hospitality sector in Saudi Arabia? What are the current trends?

Saudi Arabia is putting tourism at the forefront of Vision 2030. All Ministries are pushing this agenda, including the Ministry of Tourism. They are driving the tourism agenda by supporting the classification and by supporting the investors looking to invest in the sector. Other important government sectors and semi government sectors are also pushing the development of the hospitality sector. Saudi Arabia is a big market, not only for religious purposes, but also other purposes. They want to really diversify the economy to include tourism and other aspects. That is where hospitality is a big arm of this drive. You can see this through a lot of initiatives such as Red Sea, NEOM, Qiddiya, Diriyah Gate, and more. AlUla is also a big example of how the government is developing historical sites to attract tourism. In short, we are in the middle of a really big development of tourism, and for people to come for tourism they need hotels to stay in and enjoy. This is where you see the dynamic of the market between private investors, government, semi government, who are all combining their efforts to make this happen until 2030. We are very positive about it and as a senior member in this hotel, I am seeing the difference between what was happening in 2016 and what is happening right now. You can see a big push, you see more projects kicking off and you see a lot of workshops and a lot of interest in this sector and we are very happy about it.

What is your assessment of the image of Saudi abroad? Previously, the image was very focused on the energy sector towards something that is now more open to tourism. What is your opinion on this?

It is moving at a very fast pace, meaning a lot of changes are happening. From a visa perspective, recently, the government has opened for people who have the Schengen or the American visa and they can now access the country along with residents of the Gulf countries. That is giving this industry a big push. This year, we can see the inflow of travelers coming to Saudi because of these restrictions that have been lifted. There are other initiatives by the government that are also helping the international travelers to know Saudi more. The problem previously was that people did not know Saudi. Now, all of these important events are taking place in the Kingdom and they are giving a very positive image externally. It is a matter of time, a matter of exposure, a matter of international events that will take place in the country that will attract more attention. Even as a resident, not only as a responsible person in hospitality, I can see every week you have an international event taking place from the Formula E to Diriyah Tennis with important international players, Formula 1 in Jeddah, or other cultural events. There is a big push around culture, around tourism, around events that are taking place and that is really changing the image of how Saudi wants to be portrayed externally. There is also a lot of participation from the local side because the government wants to keep things authentic as well and keep the Saudi flavor. We do not want to be only an international player imitating other countries. You want to still have this flavor of having the cultural values and the cultural identity. You can see that through a lot of messages coming from the Ministry of Tourism and other institutions as well. In the Crowne Plaza RDC, you can see a cultural tent just at the entrance of the hotel and even the man who is serving the Saudi coffee is certified because they train him to be a welcome host. This is a small example of how the welcome experience is still going to be authentic towards the international travelers and this is a very good indication about keeping this authenticity of the country when it comes to international travelers – feeling it, touching it, understanding it. This is an important message.

How do you stand out from the competition? What makes Crowne Plaza RDC unique and what are your competitive advantages?

Crowne Plaza RDC opened its doors to welcome its guests in 2018. We are located in a prominent location in the upper side of Riyadh in the Digital City. We are surrounded by a lot of important ministries, shopping arcades, restaurant arcades, hospitals, etc. It is an important location. The hotel was built among this city called Digital City where around 25,000 employees work. The second important point is the hotel components. Crowne Plaza RDC is built not only to be a hotel, but to be a convention and exhibition center. This is another important element for the hotel and it is one of our USPs. We have around 39,000 square meters to offer to our clients when it comes to convention centers. We have 326 rooms. So, the hotel size gives an advantage to anyone who wants to organize an event, to have even two events at the same time. With two beautiful entrances, it allows people to move within the hotel in a very easy, accessible way without causing congestion. We also have 1,500 parking spaces which gives an added value. We offer state of the art audiovisual equipment. Technology is really advancing very quickly. All these big international companies or exhibitions or conferences want the best, state of the art technologies. For example, in 2020, we hosted the G20. It was a hybrid event. The Organizing Committee decided to do the event in our hotel rather than any other. We hosted all the Ministers in the hotel and they did the hybrid event with all the G20 countries. This really shows the scale of the events that we host. Later on, you can also see this with all the medical conferences that were done on hybrid. They used a lot of technology to have international speakers and international participation from abroad, but they hosted locally for a lot of big crowds. This gives us an important element in how much technology has been used to showcase the hotel and from the COVID days until now, you can see even mid-scale companies love to come to the hotel to do their event. They take advantage of the LED big screens. It is not only a video projector anymore; they want more branding of their events as well. More money is being spent on the choreography and the way these events are portrayed because that reflects a good image of their company as well and they can sell it easily to their clients and to participants. We are not alone from a technology perspective. We work in close collaboration with very good partners who bring the latest technology. As a whole, we have a great team and great service and that is what keeps us really competitive compared to other hotels. We are considered to be one of the biggest and one of the best.

What are the activities and competitive advantages of the IHG Group itself?

IHG is the mother company and Crowne Plaza is one of the brands of IHG. We are represented nicely in the Kingdom and we have been here for several years as a company. Under IHG, we have the Intercontinental brand, Holiday Inn, Staybridge, Crowne Plaza, and more brands are coming in the pipeline. People love our brand because a lot of them are IHG One Rewards Members. So, they utilize the membership to be loyal clients to our company. We are very well perceived within the local community. People travel globally and they know our brands so we are really privileged. We are well located in different parts of the Kingdom itself. Wherever you travel in the Kingdom, you are going to find an IHG hotel and you would love to stay there. We are in Jubail, Al Ahsa, Khobar, Makkah, Madinah, Jeddah, Yanbu. In Riyadh, we have a number of hotels including four Crowne Plazas, four Holiday Inns, and we have Voco as well, which is one of the latest brands in our IHG portfolio, and there are more to come. This is what gives us an edge. This is why we are proud of what we represent in the Kingdom and the partnership that we have with our owners and with our employees and with our guests. The relationship is not only five years, it goes from 1960 until now.

Who is your target clientele? Are you looking to attract more local or international guests?

Saudi is a country and an economy that has a lot of attraction from abroad. The Saudis within Saudi like to travel and usually our top clients are Saudis. Then comes the other nationalities, regional countries and international, mainly Europe, then followed by the States. Asia has a big number of travelers to Saudi as well. It is a diverse number of diverse nationalities.

What are some of your success stories and achievements? What are you proud to have accomplished at Crowne Plaza RDC?

I am honestly proud of a lot of things that we do. We have organized very big events prominently, with G20 being one of the biggest. We have done a lot of medical exhibitions. Our hotel won the IHG IMEA, which is the India Middle East and Africa Commercial Team in 2021. We are known for excelling. We take great care of our guests. We are considered to be one of the hotels that guests love to stay in because we look into their preferences, we take care of their stay, and we add value to their stay.

I would give credit to our employees because our employees are important pillars in this hotel, from the selection process until we train them and they become performing, the whole cycle of employee engagement has been at the highest level. We are very proud. This hotel has a very high number of local colleagues, Saudi colleagues. We are working closely with the Ministry of Human Resources and the Ministry of Tourism to really engage with both these Ministries to increase our local talents. By doing that, we demonstrate our contribution towards the economy. How can you be sustainable if you do not take people into consideration? We are hiring, we are developing, and we are working very closely with both Ministries to really engage, develop, train, and increase local talents within and people love to see that. For example, with one of the initiatives that the Ministry of Tourism have launched this year, we are proud to say that we have eight candidates from our hotel who have been nominated to enroll in the Masters in Hospitality with Les Roches. It puts a lot of responsibility on us to develop them in a very short period of time and try to develop them within the ranks and support their succession planning. This is only one small example compared to the other initiatives that we are doing from a people perspective. People are the pillars and if you have good people, the services of the hotel will really be enhanced and this is what we want. Ultimately, we want to have a great service to give to our clients. Happy clients equals retention of business and the owners are going to be happy as we are when we have a profitable hotel.

How do you stand out in the dining and entertainment area?

At Crowne Plaza RDC, convention is important, the location is important, but we have a lot of USPs as well. For example, our all day dining establishment is a beautiful, big restaurant that caters to around 600 to 700 people on a daily basis. We have more than 70 to 80 chefs coming from across the globe, just to make sure that we give diversity to our clients in terms of cuisine selection.

We have beautiful signature restaurants as well. One of them is a churrascaria Brazilian restaurant called Wildfire where we are offering our lunch and dinner options to clients. It is a beautiful atmosphere. We really want to focus on three important elements: food, service, and value for money. There are a lot of nice restaurants opening in town and we are differentiated by offering these three elements.

Another restaurant at Crowne Plaza RDC that shines is KOI which is our Japanese Peruvian establishment. It is new as a concept in town. We have great, fresh seafood being offered. The flavors of the Peruvian cuisine are tremendous and people are appreciating it and they are loving it. We are open for lunch and dinner. We also have something special this year at KOI which is the Sushi Happy Hour. It is a bit different than other places in the world where you would go for a happy hour to have a drink. Here, we have people leaving work at 5PM so we thought to give them the opportunity to try our restaurant. So, we open from 5PM to 8PM only to offer a selection of sushi and maki rolls and it is perceived very nicely within the business community around us and they love it.

We also have a beautiful garden called the Tea Garden. Now, we are hosting the World Cup with a beautiful 8×4 outdoor screen. We have a lot of facilities for people to enjoy the World Cup games because some of them are happening during the afternoon. We have a lot of employees just across the road, so we are welcoming them to come and attend. This venue is not only for the World Cup, but it is also for other corporate events and for people who want to come to the hotel from an individual perspective and enjoy the evenings. Saudi, especially Riyadh, enjoys sixth months of beautiful weather before it gets pretty hot. So, people enjoy the outdoor facilities and that that is something we are happy about.

Soon, we will be opening our cigar lounge. I am proud of what the team has done and the design of the lounge and it is going to be an amazing place. It is going to be distinctive to what is in Riyadh. We do not have a lot of lounges in Riyadh yet and this is going to be an added value. It is modern and it is going to be exclusive. We are still opening it up for people who would like to come and have a cigar. However, we are also opening for people who want to rent a locker to put their cigars and if they feel like coming across for an hour for a business meeting and have a cigar as well, they can just come in, take their cigars from the lockers, and enjoy their meeting in the lounge.

We have been able to add flavor to our restaurants, lately, with the ease of licensing for entertainment. We really need to thank the General Entertainment Authority because it is the body that governs all the entertainment activities in Saudi and we have gotten permission to have entertainment in our lobby. On a daily basis, when you sit in the lobby, you can see and hear beautiful artists displaying their art and it gives pleasure to people who are attending the lobby. Also, we have the same thing happening in our restaurants as well on the weekend and also on weekdays. That is something we focus on. The whole purpose is to really give diversity to our clientele and give them a chance to see what we are offering from an entertainment perspective. With restaurants and lobbies, you do not want it to be stagnant or static anymore. It has to be full of engagement, full of life from what you offer from a coffee experience to an entertainment experience and this is what we are witnessing from a clientele behavior. You see more people wanting to do their meetings in the lobby rather than in offices. During the day, our lobby is full because people want the experience and they want to live their experience and they invite even their clients to the lobby. We are very happy about that and we want to take it further by increasing the diversification of our artists.

Recently, we also introduced the robot service. During the busy days and busy hours, we have started using two robots who have been configured nicely to work in the hotel, go to the guest’s room, and deliver some necessities. The benefit is that during the busy hours of the day, you have fast and reliable service. This is another reason why we think technology is important.

What is your medium term vision, three to five years? What do you hope to achieve at Crowne Plaza RDC?

Since 2019, when I took over the Crowne Plaza RDC as General Manager, the evolution has been moving in the right direction. We are well known for being the top player in exhibitions and events and we want to continue doing that. We want as well to make sure that the products that we offer and the condition of our spaces are up to the top level at all times. This means keeping the state of the art condition and technolgy as our top priorities. The services of our people are very important. My ambition and the mission of the team is to make sure that we put the client on the top priority when we are corresponding with them, when we are helping them to organize the event, especially international players who do not know the country very much and you are their window to enter into a country. When they come in, the more you work with them and you help them to organize their event within their budgets, that is important and we want to be excelling in this area. Already, this is our objective and that requires a lot of effort because you want to have the right people, the right systems, the right processes. This is one of our important messages.

Another important point that we are working very closely with the owners on developing is our food and beverage services by keeping our restaurants up to date. Saudi is changing from an F&B scene and people are enjoying the diversity of the cuisines that we are offering. Plus, we want to keep it very competitive. A lot of attention as well is on keeping a great hotel because we have lovely spaces, we have lovely rooms. Keeping the condition of our product is very important.

The last element is focusing on the people agenda. For me, the people agenda is very important and Crowne Plaza as a brand is an important brand for IHG. We have our Crowne Plaza brand behaviors that we try to live and we try to embrace with our employees to make sure that this has been cascaded to our clients. People agenda means their performance, their development, their engagement. The more they are engaged, the better they give.

What is your engagement in CSR activities through the hotel?

At our hotel in particular, we are very much engaged with what the company does and the programs we are participating in, such as Giving for Good, which is an initiative by IHG. This program involves engaging hotels with the community. We do a lot of charity support with elders, with cancer patients, and other activities. We participate throughout the year with several local charities and local organizations supporting orphans. During Ramadan, we welcomed many elders and orphans to our iftars. This is how we are giving back to the to the community and this is something that we will continue to do.

From a sustainability perspective, particularly at this hotel, we do a lot of activities such as decreasing our food waste. We have already participated in a program where we measure how much food is wasted and how we can decrease this figure through things like menu engineering. We have a lot of projects on LEDs as well in the hotel. This is all in order to really be part of the whole responsibility of decreasing the carbon emission of the hotel. All these plans are very active and as a member of this hotel, our plans are set and we know what we are going to be doing and how we can support as a hotel the bigger picture and IHG’s objective.

What is your inspiration? What drives you to do what you do?

I have been in this business for 26 years and I love it. It is my passion. I think it is the daily excitement that drives you to always think that your day is never the same as any other day. Despite your planning and doing all of these constructed plans on your agenda, every day is something new, every day you meet new people, every day you do something different with your team. The team as well gives you a lot of motivation. By being hands on, by walking the talk, you can understand the impact that you as a GM have on your team and it gives them a lot of motivation and inspiration. I always say to my team that I do not see the client and I do not meet all the clients, but you meet them on my behalf. So, if they are engaged, if they know what they are doing, if they are knowledgeable, they will do a great job and they will represent the hotel in a fantastic way. All of these stories drive me positively and make me think about the future, make me ask myself what else can I do to make it even better? Not only from an individual perspective, but from a guest perspective, from an employee perspective, from an owner perspective, from a company perspective, “what can I do better?” inspires me to always excel.

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