Constantinos S Gavriel reflects on hospitality industry

It is a start of a big journey. We are still in its infancy just like Thailand or Vietnam was 20-30 years ago. But there is definitely a bright future for tourism and hospitality. Moreover, tourism is not just about building new hotels. It is the combination of working together with airlines, tour operators, government and local authorities for the infrastructure projects to drive the PR and image of the country. This plan of growing the tourism industry is a 10-20 year plan, not something you achieve overnight.
However, you can already see a glimpse of the astonishing progress. Bangladesh is not only attracting foreign visitors, it has already made a domestic market. The journalists are doing extremely well to promote. People's spending power is getting higher than ever before. Nonetheless, Asia as a whole is growing. So, the combination of all these factors will no doubt help the industry flourish.
As you know, we are currently the no. 1 hotel in terms of luxury. We are also the newest one in Bangladesh to be added to the list. As we see a big future for tourism in this country, we have recently signed a new project with Marriott International which will be a brand new 220 bedroom resort in Bhaluka, 60-70 km away from Dhaka. And this will be the first truly international 5 star luxury collection resort, in this country. So, the owning company of Le Meridien, Marriott International has indeed huge plans. The company is going to make a multimillion dollar investment in this new project because we believe there is undoubtedly a huge potential in tourism.
The name of the resort will be Muslin, a Luxury Collection. It will be one category higher than Le Meridien. It will have 3-4 restaurants, large spa, extensive conference and catering facilities for more than a thousand people. There will also be integrated activities for families such as 2-3 swimming pools, golf driving range, sailing for the kids, horse riding for families, an adventure playground with climbing walls and many more. Thus, it will be a fully integrated holiday resort. And when this project will be opening in the next 3-4 years, we believe the tourism industry will be on the right tracks to grow and develop.
We are one of the biggest employers in the hospitality sector. We strive to encourage ladies to join our organization. We have worked extremely hard over the last 3 years or even prior to opening, to attract new female talent to our organization. However, the number is still small. There is only 8 per cent women working in hospitality across other hotels. Our figure for this year is double of that. We are on 16%. Moreover, this number has been growing year-on-year since we started. We currently have a female door-lady which no other hotel has. We have females working in all the areas - sales, restaurants, housekeeping etc. And they do a phenomenal job.
We are very fortunate to win the World Travel Award as Bangladesh's leading hotel in 2018. And that is very much one of the most recognized travel awards to win because it is actually voted by travel agents across the world. The credit goes to the hard work and commitment of all our 500+ associates. They are very passionate and caring.
The customer experience we deliver day in and day out in Le Meridien Dhaka is second to none. And the associates very much enjoy their day to day jobs which reflect on the customer service. The feedbacks we get from most of our international customers are amazing. When they arrive here, they are so surprised with the level of service and the products we have to offer which are world-class.
Our restaurants have been recognized as excellent choices throughout the last 2-3 years. If you have one restaurant in the top-ten list of Tripadvisor, that would mean you are doing amazing. Now, coming to Le Meridien, the top 4 places in that list belongs to our restaurants. This has been possible due to plenty of hard work and investment. We have expat chefs in all our restaurants. Therefore, the authenticity of the cuisines is incomparable. Furthermore, we import more than 50% of our ingredients.
That would be trained labor force. We have an internal Marriott programme. We take certain amount of students and train them for 2 years. We are currently working at several colleges in Dhaka. Nonetheless, we are looking at all options for how to grow and develop talent. Moreover, we need to address this collectively as an industry. Building a hotel and open it is the easy part. But without great people to run them, it will be of no use. What makes a hotel stand out is the service. A world-class experience must be delivered.