The FINANCIAL — The Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel in Tbilisi has a high percentage portfolio of returning guests according to Atakan Turhan, General Manager of the Radisson BLU Iveria Hotel. By the end of the year 2010 the hotel hosted over 40,000 people and as Mr. Turhan says, out of this number a very high percentage of guests will return.
By the end of this year the hotel plans to open a new restaurant. The hotel will offer its guests a new menu this summer. “There will be new cocktails and new products that haven’t been available on the market before,” said Atakan Turhan.
“We have a very good portfolio of return guests. One of our biggest concerns is to make our guests want to come back to our hotel. We are sure that a very high percentage of our 40,000 guests will come back again,” Turhan said.
“I’m proud to announce that the Rezidor Hotel Group which is our mother company has been named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies in the hotels, travel and hospitality sector by the Ethisphere Institute for the second year in a row. So this means that we have not just sat back and relaxed after having received the award last year, but strived to deserve it the second year in a row. Our head office is really controlling what we are doing in every individual hotel in the sight of ethical standards, global ethical standards and we pay a lot of attention to following these standards,” Turhan said.
Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel Tbilisi won the award of Best New Hotel presented by the Central Asia and Turkey Hotel Investment Conference (CATHIC) in Istanbul in February 2011.
“The criteria for receiving this award includes investment terms and the product that consists of different things together which make leisure and business travellers happy. This package is not really easy to find in many hotels, either its more business oriented or its leisure oriented. In our case it’s a product that covers both segments,”Turhan said.
“We have a good variety of outlets where people can spend their weekend or spend their time in the evening, or do their business throughout the day. It’s a good product, it’s a design product, we call it a new breed design, and it has quite a unique design. The style of the rooms is really great. Most of the guests who are staying at our hotel for the first time are really surprised,” Turhan said.
“We are proud to say that the service level at our hotel is recognized as the best on the market. We have very high guest satisfaction scores,” Turhan said.
“In 2010 Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel was evaluated by a Mystery Guest giving 97.2 points to the hotel out of 100. This was the highest score of a Rezidor Hotel Group hotel in 2010,” Mr. Turhan said.
“While evaluating the hotel, the company who is sending a Mystery Guest does not reveal that information. During their stay the Mystery Guest scores the hotel in terms of service quality, guest satisfaction level, our standards, and conditions.
Receiving such high scores is a thing that we are really proud of. It’s a result of teamwork and how we pay very special attention to standards. We really focus on each small issue that can make our service better. If we receive any guest complaints which are not really positive, we really spend much time on how we can improve ourselves, how we can change the procedures and how we can recover the guests. We do our best to make our guests happy,” Turhan told The FINANCIAL.
“I can say that our advantage as a hotel in Tbilisi is having the friendliest and most smiley people of Georgia working as our team. You can taste Georgian hospitality in Georgia and the best place to experience it is at the Radisson BLU Iveria in Tbilisi,” Turhan said.
The hotel room rate at the Radisson is around 280 USD without breakfast and 300 USD with breakfast for single occupancy, without TAX.
“We do discounts for groups. Sometimes, the prices change based on different products or on the potential of the company,” Turhan said.
“For the weekends we have special discount rates, for special locations we come up with special promotions and we inform our customers with direct mailing or we put out advertisements. We are one of the best users of facebook in Georgia. I believe that we are quite active and we have a high number of followers on our facebook account. From time to time we offer different surprises to our facebook users,” Turhan said.
As Mr. Turhan says, the majority of guests of the Radisson BLU Iveria are Americans.
Americans are first in terms of the major nationality of our guests, second are guests from Turkey, the rest are mainly Europeans and those from our neighbour countries.
“For this summer we expect the majority of guests to be from the same countries, but to have more leisure guests than we served in the winter. The number of leisure tourists from Azerbaijan and Armenia is increasing and we also expect more local guests,” Turhan said.
“We will soon open our terrace that will attract guests in summer and we are working on a new design at the moment. We will have a new product at out terrace, which is an upgraded version of last year. We expect increased demand for our terrace. It was almost occupied every night, so this year we will probably have to say no to some people unfortunately – this is my projection that with the new design it will be more popular,” Turhan said.
“In summer we will offer our guests a new terrace menu. The terrace menu is centred more on grilled products, more Georgian tastes which we are happy to offer. The Filini menu is updated every six month; we receive menus from the head office of Filini. By the end of the year we well come up with a new restaurant at our hotel which will soon be designed by our team. We also updated the menus of both our bars. We have new menus with more varieties of dinks; we have a bigger variety of food products now,” Turhan said.
As summer is coming soon, hotel guests as well as many others would like to have a variety of entertainment outlets at the hotel. Together with restaurants and bars, Radisson Blu Iveria offers people the already-well known Anne Semonin Spa.
“People have the opportunity to try the best spa in Georgia at the Radisson hotel, an international brand – the Anne Semonin Spa. I often receive compliments from our guest that this is a really unique spa. Most of our guests are people who travel a lot, so they are the experts on hotels and who can compare the products of different places with our products,” Turhan said.
“People who have visited spas in different places of the world say that our spa is the best one that they have ever seen. The design of our spa is really unique. There is Georgian poetry on the spa’s walls in Georgian and in Latin letters, so this is a special concept – we are reflecting Georgian culture. The treatment quality is best at the spa and it satisfies all international standard levels of spa service,” Turhan said.
“Our casino is also very big and a very popular one. People are very happy that we have such an outlet. Our summer outlet terrace is really nice as well. Our Oxygen bar is also very famous and usually we run out of space unfortunately for all the people who want to visit us there. We will also come up soon with new cocktails and new products that haven’t been on market before. We are keeping it alive with new offers,” Turhan said.
“We are expecting a new music programme in the Filini restaurant, Piano night; Gigi Wonder will start playing at our hotel. He is a very popular artist and musician, so this will bring more business to our restaurant. 3 days a week he will be playing with us and we will soon be announcing this. We are opening a new hotel in Batumi and our executive chef has transferred to Batumi, so we will come up with interesting offers in Batumi. Our hotel will have a new chef with different tastes and we will come up with more attractive offers in Tbilisi. We will make a couple of changes to our menus too,” Turhan said.
Radisson Blu hosted the most influential business awards – Golden Brand – in March 2011.
“It was a gorgeous night with very high profile people representing the leading brands in Georgia. I was happy to attend the Golden Brand event myself. Golden Brand adds more credit to our portfolio of business and corporate clients,” Turhan said.
The Radisson has significantly reduced energy consumption, making the hotel more green.
“We have improved a lot, saving energy after the opening of the hotel. Our building has an automation system and I can say that it’s an intelligent building. We have decreased energy consumption by 40% by better management and optimization. This environmental protection system is one of the focuses of our hotel chain. We have to report the consumption of utilities to our head office every month and we have to come up with different resource-saving activities.”
“We have to make sure that we are consuming less and less energy and we improve our effectiveness and efficiency. So we really spend much time on this issue. The return of investments is saving in money and also using these energy resources less. It’s good for the environment around us, it’s good for the resources of the country and we spend a lot of time on this issue. It’s called a responsible business that is a part of the responsible business programme that the Rezidor Hotel Group has. We also focus on charity activities, improving our staff, adding value to our community around us and also helping people who need help,”Turhan said.
“Georgia has its own cuisine, own music and even its own alphabet. It’s interesting to see Tbilisi, its people, nature and the country itself. Georgia has a great wine culture. What I like the most about Georgia is its own, special taste; it’s a combination of different things that makes Georgia – Georgia!”
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