Hospitality Sector and Hotel Industry in Kenya: Overview of Trademark Hotel in Nairobi

Interview with Shaileen Shah, General Manager of Trademark Hotel

What is your assessment of the hospitality sector in Kenya and Nairobi? What are the latest trends?

There has been an evolution. There is a bit of a new age coming along with the old age. However, you can see a lot more growth that has happened since then, not just owners putting up buildings, but bringing in that style. There is a little bit more of flamboyance, there is art and architecture. The evolution has been great because a lot of brands have entered Kenya and Nairobi is one of those big hubs. Brands such as Starwood, which you would have never known, is now a Marriott.

We are part of Design Hotels which is indirectly affiliated with Marriott. People are starting to learn about the loyalty points and staying at those properties to get those points. Travelers are becoming more and more aware of what their needs are. They have choices now when they choose their hotels.

A lot of business owners that are traveling outside of the country now come back and want to apply those concepts here. What is worrying is that there is a bit too much happening too soon. There are more and more hotels coming up and more beds with not enough heads at this time. We look at all angles and possibilities where the government will help us to enrich that. We have things like Magical Kenya happening where they enhance the advertising and the marketing of the country and tell people to come to our city. You can wake up with a giraffe eating off of your plate! It is not the product; it is actually the experience that people are after. I do see big changes and it will continue to grow, but the competition will get even fiercer.

Is the hotel industry at a higher level in Kenya than in other places in Africa? Is it more developed or more mature and contemporary in style?

It is contemporary. It is evolving. No longer are people putting together just buildings. They are actually thinking about what kind of stone or tile or furniture to use. If they are serving a certain type of food, what kind of plate will it be served on? We now live in a world where storytelling is the best part of marketing. It is the most appealing part. If a story evolves out of a product or how it came together or what the story is that continues this product, that is where we are.

We talk about our properties with great pride because there is a story behind them. We are quite ahead of where other countries are. That is not to say that there is not much going on in Africa. People today talk about Addis, Rwanda, Nigeria. South Africa has always been there on the map and we have always been compared to them, for example.

What is the story of the hotel?

With Trademark, it was the evolution of simplicity. How do we make “simple” interesting? For example, right in front of me is Africa’s longest sofa. There is a story behind that as well.

The artwork around the hotel has a story of people and reality. It is not about just plonking a piece of art on the wall and saying it makes the space look good. There is a story behind that, too. At the restaurant, everything is about local wood, supporting local talent, keeping things rustic. We do not want our guests to come here and admire a disco ball. We want them to admire the people. We want them to feel at home. If your living room looks like this, we want you to feel like you are in your living room and not anyone else’s. For the food you eat, we want you to feel the same comfort of home rather than something that is glammed up on a plate but does not taste very good. It is all about keeping it very simple yet it has its own elegance to it.

When you leave from here you are able to say you were at this hotel called the Trademark and it made you feel good, even if you cannot pinpoint one thing. That is what we were after here. When we look at Tribe, it is completely different. It is the epitome of artifacts. It has the African essence to it. It has the elegance of saying come to me because I am your tribe. I am trying to show you what I am about. It has an unapologetic feel where you walk in and you see something out of the ordinary. It says I am not supposed to say I am sorry. I want you to be a part of me because I want you. Whereas, at Trademark, we took a completely different twist and said that we want to feel you.

We have two very distinctive properties. They are on two different sides of a mall. It is probably the only mall in Africa where you can walk into it and feel like you are in a playground, not a mall. There is everything from 250 shops to 42 restaurant options, a bowling alley, a trampoline park, a children’s play area, a hospital outpatient service, two spas. Where else do you need to be? When you have a business traveler coming to your hotel for a whole week, what do they do after work? Where do they go? What do you actually do after a hard day? We do not confine our guests to have to eat in our restaurant. They can go out and experience what we have. The uniqueness is that you have that freedom.

What more would somebody need when they come to Village Market and have that first security check and then after that they are free as a bird? You get into your hotel room, take a quick shower, you have options to eat, you know where you are going for your meetings. Whether it is for work or play, you have options. We are quite happy with what has happened here with the product and it is quite interesting.

What sort of clientele are you hoping to attract?

We believe in something called a blue ocean strategy. Over the last few years, we have been concentrating on the diplomatic clientele. A lot of the diplomatic district is around us and that has primarily been our focus. We then made a bullish attempt to go out and look for corporate clients. The obvious issues we have are the roads, the time it takes to get from one place to another. Trying to attract certain corporates to come out this way has been difficult; however, there are options, there are ways to lure them in a different way. Again, creating these unique experiences where people can come out, have other things to do if they are here for a full week, there are a lot of options we can look at. But we have decided to go beyond that as well into a market we have not really worked on which is the leisure market. We now have a very unique placement with the whole recreation element. We find that in the month of December when everybody runs away to Mombasa to get to the beach, we forget about the people who actually live in Mombasa who are probably running away from the beach and trying to go somewhere else. There is the middle to lower-class people who cannot afford a plane ticket to get away with their entire family and go on a holiday out of the country. So, how do we create that holiday experience here in Nairobi? There are neighboring cities like Kisumu and Eldoret that have the people who would like to travel into Nairobi, whether it is just for a weekend or a whole week with their kids. So, we created something called a staycation.

The family can take a flight in and we pick them up from the airport. They get to spend time with their kids while we host them. The children can enjoy the recreational facilities at the mall while the parents can enjoy a spa treatment or a nice dinner together. And there, you have a great weekend. You have made a little holiday out of it.

We tried that approach hoping to get a good mix of the business as well as the leisure clientele. We find that a lot of people go home for the holidays in July and August, this is the time we would capitalize on that leisure clientele as this is the time that people are coming to watch the migration in the Mara. With all our facilities and outlets why wouldn’t they stop over at Tribe or Trademark?

Are you planning on attracting partnerships or investors?

We always have this ambition of us having representation in the Mara, for example, or at the coast. We have started that process of looking for those properties or looking for those partnerships. Many times, we speak to our counterparts in those areas and we have to obviously match the caliber of the hotels that we are speaking to. For Tribe, we would speak to a lodge that would be at par on that level. For Trademark, we would choose a property based on that. We want to work out deals where guests would be able to come and stay here for the night and then go out on their safari.

Creating packages is very important for us. We are now affiliated with Marriot through their loyalty program and through Design Hotels. We would not be looking for additional partnership to change that. The brand represents our hotels and the uniqueness of them. We are never forced under the Marriot regulations to change our style or what we would like to do with our properties, which is a good thing and why we have stayed as well. The owners are very proud of what they have built.

What can you offer to clients looking for events or meetings?

We currently have a conference facility on our second level that is 12,000 square feet. It has a large conference room that divides into three spaces. We have six board rooms. It is a very unique space. It has an open-closed terrace that gives it the flexibility of being an open space and a closed space at the same time. It is also very beautifully built where we can have everything from corporate meetings to events to launches to weddings to parties. It can start very early in the morning and end very late at night. The uniqueness of it is that you get to choose a space that is not very corporate looking and that can be turned into something really grand as well. When we started to see that business evolving and people liking the space, it actually turned out that we did not have enough of that space. So, we recently built another level of space on our first floor that has two large meeting rooms which have a capacity of about 80 people each with a large dining facility.

We want you to eat together, network together, find that one new contact that you can leave today and say that this guy was not at your meeting, but you met someone new today. It is all conceptually there that we are trying to create spaces where people meet. We are also looking for meetings to be more fun. One of the unique things that we are trying to do is that on your breaks, you can play a game of table tennis, go bowling after your meeting or go to the trampoline park and destress. Here at Trademark, we are trying to introduce a lot of these unique elements that a normal meeting space would not give you. We our guests that it is okay to take off their tie and let loose. It gets your mind thinking as well so it is a good thing.

What is your vision for the medium term? How do you see the company developing in two to three years’ time? What do you want to have achieved?

I never say “world-class” products or “four-star service” or a “five-star hotel.” The uniqueness and the mantra that we preach here is that this is a four-star product at three-star pricing with five-star service. Compared to Tribe which is a five-start product, how can we differentiate ourselves? In terms of service, we never want to change that. Whichever hotel you go to, you have to get the same service.

Every one of our guests has to be treated the same way through our service and our unique experiences. I hope the vision of this company and this hotel group continues, that we continue to sell experiences, not the products. On our TripAdvisor today, there is not one person that talks about how they love the lighting in their room or the façade of the building or the plants that we have outside or Africa’s longest sofa. It is never about that. It is about a clean spacious room, great food, and especially about great staff. I hope to keep that vision alive. My personal vision is to build on that. I always tell my staff here that if this hotel was in a container, we would do just as well. It is always about staff and the unique experience.

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