AX Group's newly-appointed director of hospitality Claire Zammit Xuereb: "As an industry we have a challenge this year: let's pull our socks up and face it."
When it re-opens in a few weeks, AX Group's Suncrest Hotel, Malta's largest four-star, will reveal the results of its winter facelift as it braces itself for a particularly challenging season. Its core market, the UK, is gripped by severe recession and sterling is weak.
The group's newly-appointed director of hospitality, Claire Zammit Xuereb, was just a child when her father and group chairman Angelo built the 458-room hotel 21 years ago. The project, then considered hugely ambitious, was inaugurated just in time to herald the tourism boom of the late 1980s and 1990s. But the economic downturn and rising costs forced the hotel's temporary closure last December - staff were asked to go on leave while a three-month maintenance and refurbishment phase got underway.
In her new role, Ms Zammit Xuereb will oversee the management of all four of the group's hotels - the four-star The Victoria and the five-star The Palace in Sliema, as well as the Suncrest and Sunny Coast hotels in Qawra.
The Suncrest is undoubtedly her biggest - and most immediate - challenge. Her ally at the hotel is Joseph Vella, the new general manager, who has extensive experience of business in the north of the island.
"My priorities at the Suncrest are re-energising staff, giving them a very clear direction so that targets are achieved. The hotel is highly dependent on tour operators and online bookings, and we will have to work harder and more creatively at sales and marketing. Two floors of the Suncrest are allocated to timeshare. The plan is to structure the other floors according to different market segments. Single room themes are also an option.
"In the short-term, we need to achieve a healthy mix of bookings from our main sources to enable us to strategise. We have to concentrate on this summer and we will close the hotel next winter to focus on the following summer. All things remaining constant, the hotel should remain open in the winter of 2011."
Ms Zammit Xuereb says the current scenario demands that business becomes about striving to make every day profitable. Tourism in the north of the island is poor at the moment, she points out.
Centrally it is relatively better and February has improved on January in terms of bookings.
Both The Victoria and The Palace are seeing encouraging occupancy with an average 73 per cent, on a yearly note. The realistic target is 77 per cent. Reaching it requires achieving a "balanced market mix" from the northern European and business sectors the two hotels are aimed at.
"We have never had so many forward bookings," she points out. "Right now, it is about forgoing the rates to obtain volume. The immediate strategy has to focus on increasing that volume. Very simply, it is about putting people in rooms this year. In the market place, the five-star rates will drop down to four-star, and the four-star to three-star. We have to offer increased added value for money."
Ms Zammit Xuereb will now have two bases: one at The Palace and another at the Suncrest, where she 'grew up'. She has two degrees in tourism and hospitality management from Switzerland's Centre International de Glion and Wales University, and worked for Celebrity Cruise Royal Caribbean International in Miami and at the Intercontinental Hotel in Mayfair, but the Suncrest is where her true grounding in the industry took place.
"It is why I believe in the Suncrest," she says. "It was a school for so many people. Many of the general managers and people occupying top management positions at Malta's best hotels once worked at the Suncrest. It has a great deal of potential, even in this financial environment.
"The British, the Suncrest's target market, are still the world's largest outbound market. The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association is lobbying to incentivise the UK market. Malta needs it to cut the cost base: sixty per cent of occupancy will be about building volume. We will just have to manage our rates very carefully to clinch bookings. That will lead to yield management. As an industry we have a challenge this year: let's pull our socks up and face it."
Ms Zammit Xuereb, who admits being fiercely protective of budgets once they have been agreed upon, plans to transport the management system implemented at the group's flagships The Palace and The Victoria to the other two hotels. Reporting lines will be the same at all four properties. Kevin Callus, who has worked his way up the ranks at the group's hotels and shown great promise, has just been appointed hotel manager of The Victoria and acting hotel manager of The Palace.
David Jaccarini, the long-standing general manager of the Sunny Coast, the group's first hotel, is another member of Ms Zammit Xuereb's immediate management team. The "very successful hotel" sees half its occupancy from timeshare business. A healthy mix between hotel business and online bookings are on the rise. The hotel's key attributes are low staff turnover and repeat guests.
The 90-room aparthotel is to be gradually renovated floor by floor. Behind the scenes, a new synergy is planned between the Sunny Coast and The Suncrest so that the properties complement each other rather than compete, with a view to consolidating business further.
The Tal-Kaptan family restaurants at the Suncrest and on the Valletta Waterfront have enjoyed remarkable patronage - a success Ms Zammit Xuereb plans to build upon. The focus has been on the particular pizza dough which Tal-Kaptan is renowned for, as well as the aesthetics that attracts all market segments. The theme is the brand's added value, and franchising could now be in the pipeline.
There are guarded plans for the V5 bar on the Waterfront, a venue Ms Zammit Xuereb describes as "excellent for parties". With its two floors, VIP area and a rodeo bull as the central feature, the establishment has hidden potential to realise and changes will be made so it appeals to a wider clientele. Kleavon Xuereb has been entrusted with managing all three venues.
Ms Zammit Xuereb is mindful of the fact that her teams are her business' key assets: "I have always told people that they are the pillar of our business success. They will grow with the business, a few at a time, and more flexibility is on the cards."
Ultimately, besides consolidating the group's hotel and restaurant business, her brief is to build the AX Hotels brand, under which there will be immediate cost-effective and efficient synergy of human resources, sales and marketing, and purchasing.
Ms Zammit Xuereb is wary of setting rigid business plans. She prefers to set targets and instinctively fine-tuning strategies to achieve them along the way. She runs ideas by her immediate family, namely her husband to gauge reaction, and turns to her fellow directors for "technical advice".
"There are three things I keep in mind," she points out. "Foresight is one - we must try to foresee situations. Always respect budgets. Focus on reaching targets."