INTERVIEW

By Elias Haddad

Qatar – The hospitality industry is led majorly by men. However, the dynamics of hotel leadership are changing as women inevitably have broken the stereotype by putting themselves forward in key leadership roles.

Although I’ve interviewed many successful hoteliers, Esra Parin, the GM of JW Marriott Marquis City Center Doha Hotel, is the first female General Manager I have interviewed. As I indulged in the conversation, I find Esra to be a determined, driven, and robust individual who prospers on meeting and as well as exceeding each and every goal set. I also sensed that she’s not afraid of challenges that come her way.

In this conversation, Esra Parin has talked with us at LLQ Hospitality about her career path, her leadership, inspirations, advice, and thoughts about raising the bar in the hospitality field.

Learning the Power Hotelier Skills from Esra Parin,

The GM of JW Marriott Marquis City Center Doha Hotel

Tell us what drove you to become successful Hotelier, and what do you think a woman needs in the hospitality industry to achieve the level of success that you have evidently acquired?

Becoming a hotelier was not in my initial plans, but I aspired to be in service of people and to contribute to the world that I lived in, and be a part of something useful that made a positive impact. So I started thinking of research, science, medicine, humanitarian work with worldwide organizations.

Then as I was attending the university, and as the hospitality industry was fast developing, I took my first job with the Pullman Hotels followed by Kempinski Hotels, and every job I took on made me want to reach for the next level.

I think it is a self-inflicted journey for anyone in the wake of exploration of ourselves and for reaching our true potential.

I realized along the way we must create our space to move forward, believe in ourselves to eliminate barriers, follow what we are passionate about, and give our hearts, this shows in everything we do with the best possible outcome for anyone in everything that we do and to foster deeper connections with the people we work with and be in service to.

In that aspect, I would not advise anything different to other women in the industry. What applies to men also applies to women, I believe. And honestly, I never thought I had a disadvantage over men despite all statistics suggesting still otherwise for our industry.

Do you think that women lead differently than men? What advice would you give to the new generations of women working in the hospitality industry?

I think we all have our strengths in different areas which does not necessarily depend on whether being a male or a female leader working in the industry.

I would refrain from generalizing between male and female leaders, but I believe there are statistical researches that suggest women perhaps may have more strength in coaching, mentoring, and developing their teams, being less transactional and more bonding with empathy as well as strategic in their relationships.

I also think diversification in teams from gender to character traits, helps to bring the best outcome.

My suggestion for the women hospitality industry is to believe in themselves, push themselves not to just seek their way up but to become a better version of themselves constantly to seek to reach their full potential.

Also focus on building profound connections on all levels from employees to guests and business partners, constantly learning and evolving, being fearless, always pushing the boundaries on what they do, innovating and reinventing business.

The passion to work in hospitality, fortitude to always wanting to improve, and persistent curiosity drove me to work my way up. Also, taking up the opportunities and not allowing fear to get in the way is something I’ve practiced in my career life.

The women empowerment journey has come a long way, how do you think the hotel industry is making its mark?

I believe the female presence in the hospitality industry has been significantly improving over the past few decades.

However, if we look at senior leadership roles both property as well as corporate leadership roles, although the ratio of women vs men is improving. The progress has been relatively slower for the top executive positions as well as for the general manager roles.

Major hotel companies in the industry have been focusing on bringing gender parity in addition to diversity in the workplace, and it has shown significant growth in areas such as sales and marketing, brand management, rooms operations.

However, it’s not as equally for other expertise areas such as food and beverage, finance, and some others. I am confident that we will witness a positive change over the next few years with an increasing rate.

You have been the General Manager of JW Marriott Marquis City Center Doha since March 2020, so right in the start of the pandemic! How did the hotel battle COVID-19 under your administration?

We went into a swift contingency plan for the first six months.

Our focus was to retain our teams which we managed and then we started the recovery path and we are performing better than the pre-pandemic period following the conversion of the hotel into the Marriott portfolio.

What do you think the travel and hospitality industry will look like especially after the pandemic?

In my opinion, people are quickly trying to bounce back. First, I believe will be leisure travel that will bounce back post-pandemic.

However, as we have seen since August, there is an exponential growth in the business travel in our market, so as many do in other markets. Most people want to go back to travel and they feel far more comfortable doing so since the majority already had been vaccinated, and now that we know the vaccines are quite reliable in terms of protecting.

I guess we will see more and more business trips, meetings, conferences, sports events, social events, and leisure travel.

As you know, after most crises and economic downturns, or other major events that impact public sentiment, the bounce back always is very strong and much faster than expected. So I am really optimistic in terms of travel coming back stronger than ever.

What is the biggest challenge that you’re facing to improve the guest experience especially after the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Pandemic really put us on a test, we had to quickly adapt to the new health and safety requirements, and all travel restrictions.

However, I can say we all adapted very swiftly in the industry and assured our guests that we provide a fully compliant and safe environment for their stay. Some of our guests did not even want to use our executive lounge facilities, and we sent the offering to their rooms respecting their safety concerns.

We still remained connected with our guests even when we did not operate our dining venues due to the restrictions and checked on their well-being on regular basis to ensure we were able to look after them.

With 20+ years in leadership positions in leading hospitality brands, what’s one leadership lesson you’ve learned in your career?

Invest in people! We are in the business of taking care of people, and the best thing we can do is to ensure we select the right talents for taking care of the people and invest in them. By doing so, we develop our teams and keep them stimulated, on the other hand, they will look after the guests and our business.

I think one thing also that helped me is to learn to focus on what we can change rather than focusing on the things we can’t have an impact on. For example, you may see brand new, most luxurious hotels opening up aside from hotels that have been around for decades and sometimes in premium brands.

However, they build a legacy through their teams and their offerings, and they are more successful than those with the more supreme product. What matters most is always the people.

What exclusive qualities and soft skills do you look for when you’re hiring?

We always hire for talent and passion, depending on the position we look for a varying set of skills and experience, but what matters the most is the attitude and the passion of the person.

Once the passion and attitude is there, the person we recruit for generally becomes very successful as we can always provide the training.

What’s one unexpected shift that you’ve seen in guest expectations or demands in the last five or ten years? 

Guests are far more savvy, they know what they want and what they can expect in comparison to 20 years ago.

Digitalization and the internet have changed the hospitality market so far. Different online platforms from booking engines to review sites and social media gave ease of access to an immense level of information and an ability to compare better for the guests to make wiser travel decisions.

Hence the hotel companies need to be very agile as today’s guests are far more vocal not only in the hotels they stay in but also on all digital platforms.

Most guests nowadays prefer to communicate through digital communication channels such as WhatsApp and mails rather than calls, and we have adapted to this already a few years ago and we make sure we understand the preferred means of communication when we approach our guests.

Another major change is that today’s guest is looking for an experience, not just a hotel stay and a breakfast. All hotels that can create an experiential stay in their properties would be able to stay ahead of the game.

What are the 3 basic pieces of advice you want to give to aspiring female hoteliers?

Work hard, follow your heart, and surround yourself with good mentors.

If you are a leader, always surround yourself with people who have passion for what they do, select the right talents, and develop them as you are as strong as your teams are.

If anyone tells you “you can’t do this or that” close your ears and focus on what you’d like to do with your life & your career path, believe in yourself, and remain humble to grow further to reach your potential whatever that may be.

What’s next for you?

I am focusing on multiple projects at the moment. The most important one is our partnership with the In Q Enterprises & the renowned chef Tom Aiken as we are opening up the 3-2-1 Café and Naua Restaurantin the Olympic Sports Museum before the end of the year.

We are also looking into projects to refresh certain areas in the hotel and also focusing on all potential business opportunities for 2022.

The leadership role is something that requires copious amounts of strength, focus and forward thinking. After the Q&A session with Esra Parin, I find that she has everything a true leader and skilled hotelier must have to take their organization to the next level.

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PHOTOGRAPHER: PHOTO PHACTORY BY PRADEEP

HAIR & MAKEUP STYLING: FRANCK PROVOST