INTERVIEW - SIR ROCCO FORTE, PRESIDENT OF ROCCO FORTE HOTELS: “ACCELERATE OUR EXPANSION, AND ALSO ACCELERATE OUR REFURBISHMENT PROGRAMMES”
The Italian hotelier took advantage of ILTM to unveil a major change in the family hotel group, and spoke to us about his forthcoming plans |
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INTERVIEW - SIR ROCCO FORTE, PRESIDENT OF ROCCO FORTE HOTELS: “ACCELERATE OUR EXPANSION, AND ALSO ACCELERATE OUR REFURBISHMENT PROGRAMMES”
The Italian hotelier took advantage of ILTM to unveil a major change in the family hotel group, and spoke to us about his forthcoming plans |
Category: Worldwide - - Interviews
Interview made by Vanessa Guerrier-Buisine on 2024-01-02
 Sir Rocco Forte, President of Rocco Forte Hotels
Photo credit © Rocco Forte Hotels
Rocco Forte Hotels now has 15 hotels in six countries, with three more to come in 2024. Sir Rocco Forte talks about his philosophy of a luxury hospitality that combines luxury and family spirit.
Journal des Palaces: A few days ago you announced the acquisition of a minority stake by PIF. Please tell us more about this.
Sir Rocco Forte: The announcement coincided with us being here, quite propitious in a way. It had been in the newspapers for quite a long time with many rumours about it. We thought it wasn’t big news, and yet in fact every newspaper has written about it.
I had a 23% shareholder, which was Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, which I had for eight years. In the not-too-distant future, they would have wanted to exit. About a year and a half ago, there were many transactions in the marketplace at very high prices, so I said, well, this is a good moment to go to the market. We contacted about 20 people we thought would be interested. And PIF was one of them. PIF came back and asked for an exclusive they wanted. And so we've come to now, when we've been able to announce it.
So what does change?
I think there are a number of aspects. They're obviously very strong, powerful financially, they have a long-term view of things that they're very strategic in their approach. And effectively, they leave us to run the business.
So, there's an injection of capital into the business, which you know will help accelerate our expansion, and also accelerate our refurbishment programmes in the existing hotels. And the fact that we have them as a powerful partner has already brought other people to us.
What are your development plans?
My son, Charles, runs the development. We have already opened new hotels, and we've already got quite a pipeline. This enables us to accelerate.
Most of what we're doing currently is in Italy because we're well established there, and also get people approaching us. And it's a very attractive market, in a way, the best tourist destination. And there are plenty of opportunities, it's still a market where the big chains have not penetrated.
We're opening The Carlton, Milan in beginning 2025, Le Palme, Sardinia in 2025, and a Rocco Forte House in Rome. We have a project in Naples which will probably be in 2025 or 2026. Furthermore, we got a second hotel, bigger, coming in Puglia, in 2026 too.
We're currently looking at two more projects in Sicily.
Do you plan to develop your portfolio outside of Italy?
We're also doing one in Dubai. I want to be more outside of Italy now. I'd like to be in quite a few locations in Spain.
The United States is quite difficult because we're a long way away. I'd like to be in New York and Miami, but everything is very expensive. So, we've got to get be proactive and find things ourselves that no one else is looking at. But you've got to be on the spot to be able to do it.
What are your current and future renovation projects?
We've got a 20 million programme over two years.
At The Balmoral, we've done all the rooms. Last winter we did the swimming pool there, and we're doing the rest of the spa this Wednesday. We're doing quite many renovations across the whole portfolio. In Munich, at The Charles, we're doing 40 rooms, at Browns in London, we're doing 40 rooms this winter.
We’re also working hard on the service side to improve.
How does your staff contribute to your attractiveness?
The frontline staff are very important to me and many people often treat staff as a commodity that you can switch on and off. I don't see it like that. They're the people who transmit, they deal with the customer day-to-day basis. They’re the people who transmit the company's philosophy to the customer.
So, they are our most important people. So, you got to look after them, they have to understand the philosophy of the company. And it works quite well, but I want to really improve on what we're doing already. We have an induction programme for all our employees, that makes them feel part of the part of the operation. Then we have specific training programmes on skills, and development programmes to help people grow.
We have generally much lower turnover than most of the industry staff turnover. It was hard after Covid-19, but we've done a lot of work on that, and we have a very stable workforce now. The only place where it's still a bit difficult is Germany.
What are the main challenges for your company today?
The challenge is partly of how we make our service better than anybody else's. We're already distinct if you look at all the social media comments and so on. Our scores are at a very high level already.
The interesting that comes out of them is consistently the warm and friendly service. And that comes I think from the fact that the family is involved and people feel they're working for people who care and believe and believe in them.
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