Asaad Farag has spent most of his working life in New York. He tells how he left the city he regards as home to manage the biggest luxury hotel in St. Petersburg, Russia
Asaad Farag was prised out of his beloved New York by Tony Potter. The two had met many years ago when Mr Potter was running Hilton Hotels in New York and Mr Farag was climbing up the hospitality ladder as an F&B director.
A year ago, the extremely persuasive Mr Potter, now ceo of CHI (Corinthia Hotels International) returned to the Big Apple to convince Mr Farag, then general manager of the 770-room Crowne Plaza in Times Square, to move east to Russia.
He has not regretted the move. The hotel of which he is now general manager, the Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel is a striking building, even for a beautiful city like St. Petersburg. It is also the result of a vision stretching over many years.
"IHI (International Hotel Investments, a Malta-based hotel development company which has a majority stake in CHI) had been hunting for the right opportunity in St. Petersburg for quite a number of years," Mr Farag said. "They wanted more than just a hotel. They felt that Russia and the market deserved a large, high end, exclusive luxury facility and they have kept to that vision."
The building Corinthia chose was in Nevksy Prospect, one of the city's great streets, and it had long been a hotel, first managed by Marco Polo and more recently by Sheraton. What IHI did was to buy up the buildings on either side of the existing hotel.
"The hotel was number 57 so they bought numbers 55 and 59. They also bought the matching block behind us to expand the hotel," Mr Farag said. The result is a new 400-room hotel with a private entrance with one of the new blocks turned into an executive wing with 105 suites, including a presidential suite while the other is a high end shopping mall and offices due to open later this year.
This vast new hotel, which opened in May, has a ballroom able to accommodate 500 people and two floors of conference facilities, including 11 break out rooms - the largest conference facilities in the city.
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Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel |
But it is the level of services which Mr Farag enthuses about. There is a business lounge with all the usual services a business person needs,
WiFi in all the rooms and, for those in the executive wing, free phone calls to numbers in St. Petersburg and Moscow, a car to and from the airport, 24 hour check-in/check-out and your own 24 hour private butler.
He will arrange to your meetings, including tourist trips that most business visitors try to add on to this history-rich city, famous for its White Nights of summer, and any other requirement of a stay.
Mr Farag said guests were high end leisure and MICE delegates, who make up about 50% of business. The hotel is just a few months old but he said business was "piling up beautifully" with the pharma, automotive and finance industries providing strong business.
The hotel can take groups of up to 500 in terms of conference accommodation but only up to 350 if they are also seeking to stay at the hotel. Currently, they range from 30 to about 300.
Mr Farag, a promising footballer in his home city of Cairo, was attracted to the hotel business from an early age. "It was a bug. I wanted to work in a hotel. It was frowned upon but it was what I wanted to do.
"I went through the training process. I was a dishwasher which taught me to be both humble and practical. There was a maitre d'hotel at the Cairo Sheraton and I wanted to be him," he remembers.
He moved on to New York as a F&B assistant manager and then began to move up with various management jobs with Ritz
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A presidential suite at the Corinthia Nevskij |
Carlton - "I saw America with Ritzy Carlton" - before becoming vp at the MGM Grand Las Vegas, director of F&B at the Beverly Hills Hotel California and executive director of F&B at the Plaza Hotel New York.
He next managed the Regent Hotel Wall Street, New York, The Turnberry Place Resort, Las Vegas and The St. Regis Hotel, Los Angeles, California.
Finally he moved from the USA to Istanbul to become general manager of the Conrad Hotel & Conference Centre.
He moved back to New York in 2007. "I have worked in America for 24 years and 21 of these were in New York. I was born and raised in Cairo but New York is now home for me," he said.
Like many in hotels, he sees people as the backbone of the industry, not just those they serve but also those they work with. "One of the main attractions was the constant change and constant challenge. One of the first things I was taught was to ‘adjust and customise.'
"It was drilled into me from the start. You adjusted to the person in front of you. You could not be rigid or defined. It does not mean you have to compromise."