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The kingdom’s only female five-star hotel general manager is using her vast knowledge of the hospitality industry and boundless enthusiasm to bond her teams together as competition in the sector intensifies.
Anna-Marie Dowling began her career as a waitress and learned the art of cleaning rooms and changing beds before stepping up the management ladder to masterminding multi-million dinar leisure operations.
“The beauty about hospitality is that if you have the drive, determination and self-motivation anything is achievable,” she said. “No-one is going to lay it on a plate for you, you really do have to work hard and climb that ladder inch-by-inch but it is possible to get to the top job. You can get to be whatever you want to be – I share my story with people all the time because I’m a great believer in life that your destiny rests in your own hands.”
The 50-year-old has already made a notable impression during her first few weeks at the helm of The Westin Bahrain City Centre and Le Méridien Bahrain City Centre.
She was up at the crack of dawn, for example, one morning to personally greet the first arrivals of the 400-plus employees and hand-deliver invitations to a team-building staff party as soon as they stepped off their buses.
This gentle touch is blended with a steely determination to ensure all are on-board for the challenges facing the Starwood Hotels & Resorts-operated properties at the popular mall, owned by Majid Al Futtaim Properties (MAF), as existing rivals vie to entice guests and diners amidst a proliferation of new properties planning their opening strategies in the coming months.
She said: “I can’t carry anyone that wants to be a ‘five-out-of-10’; we have to be the best. It’s a journey that never ends.”
Bahrain is busy showcasing its expanding hotel and tourism infrastructure at global travel shows with an active hotel pipeline of 13 properties, 3,000 hotel rooms and tourism expected to contribute $1billion by 2020.
The increase in rooms, which are split between the luxury and four-star brackets, is set against a backdrop of occupancy levels above 52 per cent and average rates are in line with similar market movement in other regional hubs.
According to the country’s Economic Development Board, its tourism sector was expected to have grown further in 2015, after recording visitor numbers of 10 million in 2014, an 11 per cent increase over the previous year.
US-based Wyndham Hotel Group has four properties under development and due to open within the next 12-18 months while Emaar Hospitality Group has announced plans to launch four hotels under its Address and Vida brands, by 2018. Luxury Asia-based brand, Anantara, will also open on Durrat Al Bahrain in 2018. There are others on the way too.
Anna-Marie admits it will be one of her biggest challenges ahead as complex general manager, adding: “I have explained to the team that this is a really tough market and in this year alone there are going to be another four or five key competitor hotels that are going to open in Bahrain. Our clients will have a choice so, from a staff and customer service point of view, it is really important that we are consistent in our daily operations.
“People may not even give us a second chance, or the opportunity to fix anything that might go wrong. They will say; ‘you know what, The One & Only or the Fairmont has just opened down the road. I didn’t have a great experience here so I’m just going to vote with my feet. I’m not even going to tell them, I’m just going’.
“And, that is something that is now a part of our daily life. That reality illustrates the importance of engagement, offering a quality service level, making an emotional connection and being consistent.
“It is what we have to do. We must never rest on our laurels because yesterday’s successes are not tomorrow’s guarantees.
“Leadership is all about trying to get the very best out of every person that comes to work here to ensure they are the best they can be, every day.”
Anna-Marie’s genuinely warm smile and friendly persona should not be misinterpreted and she is determined to ‘break down any departmental silos’ she discovers in the operation and will not accept an attitude of ‘that’s not my job, it’s their job’. “We are one team and we are all on the same side,” she said. “That’s my style and that’s how I like to get things done.”
And there will be no pulling the wool over her eyes, or the covers for that matter. “I know every shortcut there is to cleaning a room. That experience still lives with me today, and even now, every week I go and speak to the room attendants. I know all the hidden spots!” she explained.
Her rise up the industry ranks are impressive by any standards and her career highlights include being named 1st in the UK’s Top 100 Most Influential Women in The Hospitality & Leisure Industry in 2011.
With 16 years’ experience as a five-star hotel GM, including property renovation and Greenfield site hotel development, she has a clear understanding of the demands of the luxury market, particularly with regard to quality and service levels.
She moved to Bahrain after a successful spell at the Sofitel London Heathrow, the luxury hotel at Terminal 5 boasting more than 600 rooms, 45 meeting rooms and an annual turnover of around £50 million where she was general manager from 2013.
Prior to that, Anna-Marie was general manager at the Royal Horseguards Hotel in London’s Whitehall and also experienced island life as managing director of The Esplanade in Jersey.
She made her debut with Starwood back in 2003, as general manager for Le Méridien Piccadilly Hotel & Café Royal and also had a spell at Whitbread’s flagship property, the London Marriott County Hall, close to the London Eye attraction.
But it’s not all been bright lights and dazzling destinations and Anna-Marie’s career journey will surely prove inspirational to young Bahrainis and expat workers starting out in the hospitality industry.
Before she sat down to this interview, she stopped by a room to check on and offer her support to a group of employees on a training course. It was the sort of opening she grasped at every opportunity along the way.
“I wasn’t an academically-gifted child,” she freely admits. “I spent too much of my time at school talking and not enough time concentrating.
“That’s the beauty of our business. I don’t think that if anybody went back to my teachers and said, do you think this person is going to be running a business that turns over 50 million pounds? I don’t think any one of them would have signed me up for that!
“When I finished school I didn’t really have a clear idea about what I was going to do and I think, like 95 per cent of people that come into the hospitality industry, I fell into it by accident. I started working as a part-time waitress and I thought ‘I quite like this’.”
Born and brought up in Kenya, she and her British parents, Rosemary and Michael Ridge, a logistics executive, moved to Zambia when she was four and in her teens the family returned from Africa back to the UK and settled in Yorkshire for a spell. “I was studying for my A-levels and I was doing geography, history and economics and had no idea what or where these subjects would lead to,” she recalled.
“I remember going home to my parents and telling them I was going to pack them in and go to catering college and they were absolutely horrified. They thought I was going to end up a waitress for the rest of my life but I could sense, even then, that if you had the drive, an ability to work hard, some common sense and self-motivation you could go places.”
She signed up to study at Wakefield District College and undertook a two-year B-tech in hotel, catering and institutional operations.
She continued waitressing at Walton Hall before moving to Stoneleigh Hotel on the other side of town, getting further experience with a bit of housekeeping and kitchen work thrown in for good measure during the holidays. “I had the bug by then,” she said.
With her qualification certificate to hand, she joined a major brand, the Holiday Inn Slough Windsor, in the southern stretches of England, which coincided with her parents moving in the same direction to Fleet in Hampshire.
It was a true case of starting at the bottom as an ‘in-house trainee’ cleaning 16 bedrooms a day and building up a ‘great empathy’ in the future for any member of staff who is tasked with keeping rooms spotlessly clean.
The next two-and-a-half years included working in the kitchens, on the reception desk, in the restaurants, banqueting hall, reservations, switchboard, even a spot of stewarding, washing-up and she can still clearly remember having to ensure all the public areas of the building remained clean. “There isn’t a job in the hotel I haven’t done at the coal face of the business,” she said.
She met a few shysters and jobsworths on the way and on one occasion suggested taking down the light shades and giving them all a spring clean. Her supervisor had been in the business for 20 years and knew how to get away with the minimum of effort. “He said: ‘are you mad, why do you want to do that, we’ll be doing it every week’? That’s when I knew I wanted to be a general manager – it might be many years off but I knew that’s what I wanted,” she said.
Her career predominantly progressed through the food and beverage route. She became a restaurant supervisor, than was offered a similar role in banqueting. “Whenever I had the opportunity of working in another department I took it – that was my formative years in the business.”
But there was a price to pay too. “You sacrifice a lot – you sacrifice family time and you sacrifice a lot of weekends. But it was all for the experience and for the future,” she explained. “So many people waste time in a job – and it’s always someone-else’s fault they’re not where they want to be. I’ve set goals and I’ve been very focused on achieving them. It helps if you have a single-minded approach that despite occasional setbacks and disappointments you carry on, often fate plays a part.”
Fate dealt its delightful hand in her move to the Middle East as she originally had her sights set on the Far East, did a four-week ‘recce’ of the region and suddenly the Heathrow opportunity came her way, and her career was grounded for the time being alongside the international runways. The travel bug was just on hold and after discussions with her former colleagues at Starwood the Bahrain opportunity blossomed.
“I thought Bahrain would suit me very nicely. I am really happy to have landed here,” she said. “It’s very friendly. Everyone is very welcoming and they hold out their hand of friendship which really means a lot. There are some places you visit and feel very isolated but I had not found that in the four weeks I have been here. I felt nothing but welcomed and glad to be a part of what’s happening here.
“I’ve had a flavour of island life and realised that you also have to step out and reach out. It’s no good me sitting here hoping everyone is going to come along and introduce themselves to me because they’re not. You’ve got to go out there, be seen to make your own network and make an effort to get to know people.
“I do recognise if you come to somewhere like Bahrain you’ve got to reach out and it’s great that when you do the people take you within their midst.
“I like that sense of belonging, that sense of recognition when you go somewhere. I recently attended the Bahrain British Business Forum lunch and already knew four or five people there that I had been introduced to and, again, they were so helpful and welcoming.
“I have felt that I made a really good choice to come here.”
She’s not worried about being the only woman hotel GM on the island either and believes her appointment shows Bahrain in a positive light on the global stage … a country that gives opportunity to those with ability no matter what their gender or nationality.
“I always struggle a little with this gender question because I think everyone has an individual approach to the job but I do think it’s a good thing that large companies and the industry in general is a lot more accepting about having females in senior managerial positions,” she said.
“That’s great for people coming behind me. Obviously, there are only ever going to be so many general managers and, to be honest, not everyone wants to aspire to that role. But if you look at the executive teams – all very senior roles and responsible positions in the hotel industry – it’s gratifying to see more and more females working at that level.
“I haven’t felt any resistance here in terms of: ‘Oh my goodness, they’ve put a woman in there, what’s going to happen?’.
“I think everyone has an individual approach towards the job. I have told the team here, when a GM changes in a hotel – whether it be male or female – everyone has a new challenge too because no two general managers ever do the job in the same way.
“I will have my certain little foibles that they’ll get used to and anyone who comes after will be different to me, whether that person is male or female.
“In my mind I have three key stakeholders in this business. One is obviously the customer and we have to make sure the service levels we give here are the best they can be.
“The Middle East market could be described as a little more demanding than some. In London we had a lot of Middle Eastern clientele so this is not new to me. The expectations of the clients remain the same – they expect value for what they are paying.
“We are not a Premier Inn or a budget hotel, we are a five-star luxury hotel so expectations for that are always high. So, for me, first and foremost, I need to make sure those expectations are met – whether that is the Middle Eastern client, the US client, the European client, whoever they are, the fact that they are parting with quite high rates to stay in the Westin and Le Méridien there will rightly be an expectation of what service level should be offered – so, first of all, it’s the customer and getting that right.
“And, secondly, the associate – they are a key stakeholder because if I don’t have a happy and engaged workforce here it doesn’t matter how many customers I bring in, they’ll go in one door and out the other.
“The satisfaction and engagement of the workforce is really important to me. You can have an unhappy workforce for a while and they’ll either start to vote with their feet or they just don’t care about the service, so it becomes a vicious circle.
“And, there is also the key expectation of the owner. MAF has invested a lot and continues to invest in these properties. I need to fulfil their expectations. We have a mall owned by the same people, and have an integrated relationship with its team too. We are reliant on them and they are reliant of us – we supply high net individuals who will spend in the shops but, of course, the shoppers also come here to use the facilities in the hotels.
“If I’m doing something that isn’t for one of those three areas than I really have to question why I’m doing it.
“Hotels are like everything-else, we have to keep evolving and developing ourselves. You can’t put a hotel up and think that’s it for the next 20 years, so we are continually looking at what’s the next thing and how can we keep it fresh.”
Le Méridien Bahrain City Centre recently renovated all of its guest rooms, Club Lounge and introduced new elements, such as the Longitude 50, a lobby café concept, as well as Art Link, a digital photography exhibition that spans Le Méridien’s corridor to the shopping mall entrance.
The Westin Bahrain Centre City also recently renovated all of its guest rooms and each room includes the signature Westin Heavenly Bed, the Executive Lounge, and the new creative space, Tangent.
Long hours and getting to grips with her new post has not given the pet-lover much time to dwell over missing her moggie, a three-legged cat called Daisy Dowling, who lost a limb following an altercation with a Jack Russell. Now, an astounding 21-year-old (the equivalent of 101 human years), the cat, which she’s had since it was six months old, is currently being fostered by her parents.
Work is currently forging ahead on refurbishing The Westin’s T-Spoon café and Saveur restaurant and a ‘new and exciting dining concept’ will be unveiled soon.
The aim is to create a restaurant that not only ‘fulfils the expectations of hotel guests but also the many thousands of people that walk round that corner to go into Saks 5th Avenue’, said Anna-Marie. However, GulfWeekly can reveal it will offer more ‘Arabic-themed fare with a European twist,’ and the outlet’s name will change.
Watch this space…
