You are in Dubai with some exciting news about Langham’s first property in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, The Langham, Jeddah. Can you share some details?
We are here to announce our fourth hotel in the Middle East in Jeddah [pictured above & below], which we think is an exciting city. We have a great location; it’s a little bit different, over by the convention centre. You can look out the window and see the King’s new sports centre. We think that’s great because all the major national sporting events will take place there. We’re also close to the new Hajj Terminal just steps away from where the new rail station will be going to Medina and Mecca. We think that combination of the corporate business, the convention business and the inter-country leisure business and topped off by the tremendous amount of people that will visit Medina and Mecca via Hajj and the completion of the new rail station makes it a really unique location. We are making some changes, but we should be open probably early 2018. It will be a very pretty, high-level service hotel with 239 rooms and 39 suites, with a nice ballroom, and two restaurants on the rooftop so you can see over the city of Jeddah and out to sea. It will service a very unique market in this location. There will be a Chuan Spa and the hotel, will interior-wise, have all the appropriate areas, such as separate family areas in restaurants and separate female areas on arrival.

Jeddah seems to be quite a hotspot among all the major hotel brands, with Rosewood, Anantara, Rocco Forte all announcing or opening hotels lately. What is so special about Jeddah?
Places like Dubai have been spectacular for many years, but Saudi Arabia has announced many plans to diversify into business and make their country more commercial and with less reliance on oil and that’s going to spur commercial development. I think Jeddah has always been a great city – it’s very easy, clean, vibrant and there's beautiful landscaping along the water. I think that’s why we’re starting to see interest. Our customers are going there and more and more inter-Middle East travel is taking place, and as more and more countries grow, for example Iraq and Iran becoming more commercial, there’s going to be much more travel, and people are familiar with our brands and are looking for that quality of product. I think that’s just the beginning of the growth we’re going to see in many parts of the Middle East.

Do you foresee a Langham opening in Iran or Iraq in the future?
Would we like to have a hotel there? Yes. We think it’s important being a small company, our initial focus was on some of the more traditional locations where our competitors are already at, so we’ve announced a business hotel in Dubai in Business Bay that’s under construction and we have another in Lusail in Doha, which is under construction. Jeddah to us was a very natural next project. We do have a resort that’s taking a while to get developed and built on the Palm Jumeirah. But would we like to be in Iran? Absolutely. We think it’s going to be an important destination. Has our company put focus there yet? No. We felt that these were important markets and we needed to lay the foundations of who our company is and make sure we have the right feeder markets, and then we will start looking at it. We were in Oman in Muscat recently looking at a project which is also a “next" destination after we secure these three important markets.

Langham Place, Lusail, Doha is well underway but I have heard rumours about a second property in Doha – can you confirm that?
Yes, it’s not fully confirmed but we are working on what may become an all-female resort with the largest spa in the world. We think it’s very unique because traditionally that type of product hasn’t been done at the highest luxury level but we think there is a unique market, and it’s a unique way for us to expose the Langham brand to a very influential market segment. We’re working on that and hopefully we will be able to officially announce something in the not too distant future. We are really excited. Somebody contacted us and said they’d stayed in one of our hotels and knew we had limited hotels in the Middle East and that we were doing a business hotel in Lusail and asked if we were interested. Our first reaction was: “Well this is really not what we do” but then we saw more details about the plan, and considered the opportunity to reach a market segment which is very important to the decision making in travel regionally as well as internationally, and the chance to be able to do that at a very high level. In addition, our company is very recognised for our Chuan Spa and traditional Chinese Medicine, so to bring that in to Doha, and put it on steroids in a 160,000-square-foot spa. It would be an absolutely incredible facility, just for women.

Is there room for two Langhams in cities like Dubai and Doha?
I think Dubai is the easy answer: yes. Langham Place, Downtown Dubai will be a business hotel in the city, right in the new extension on the Creek right where the new marina will go. We think it’s a unique destination, as is The Langham, Palm Jumeirah property; with the location, which is all the way at the end and the design, it’s really a straightforward beach resort. This market is incredible – we could probably do more. I think with Doha, although the market goes up and down, I watched New York do that for 30 years and people aren’t saying New York is over. Mainland China is the same. If you’d asked somebody five years ago about Shanghai, they would have said it was a disaster for the luxury hotel business. Today, it’s in the high 80 percent occupancy and has average rates equal to Hong Kong, New York and London. I’m confident that these markets will continue to go up. I think with Doha, they are two very unique products. The uniqueness of this other product makes it special. We’re very confident that the new property at Lusail is going to be spectacular.

Do you think that Middle Eastern travellers are well acquainted with the Langham name?
Obviously our hotel in London has been very frequently visited by people from the Middle East and our hotel in New York also has a solid base there. More and more, we’re becoming known. Are we on the tip of everyone’s tongue? No. Are we more well known today than we were yesterday? Yes. I think if you talk to people who develop and own hotels, the Langham brand is very well known and is certainly recognised with the success of our hotels around the world. Probably 70 percent of our business is booked by a third party, and from that perspective, we’re well known and recognised by all the travel consortiums. We have contracts with all the major corporations and banking institutions. For the first part of the base business we are recognised. It starts with having that foundation, and once the hotels open, we will work on the general consumer to get to know the Langham name. We’re confident by the time the hotels open and we need to be communicating with the consumer, we’ll be much further along.