WorldHotels Heroes: Mark Lee - We're stronger, wiser, with a new wave of thinking for how we grow.

Meet Mark Lee, General Manager of Media One, Dubai, a member of the WorldHotels Distinctive collection. We talked about his eclectic property, how Dubai is doing and a multiverse of fun, community, sustainability... and a considerable number of monkeys.

Q.????Hi Mark, great to see you! What’s the mood over in Dubai currently?

Dubai (and Media One) had a great 2022; we personally had a record-breaking year for top line revenues, in fact, our highest ever revenue since opening, which combines hotel-generated, F&B and office tenant tower revenue.

In terms of Dubai as a destination, despite parts the world seeming to crumble, the UAE has remained healthy. ?Dubai has maintained traction and gained from the covid crisis – Dubai had 2 months of lockdown from March to May 2020 and decided it was time to (cautiously) re-open.?We had 2 months of difficulties, but then a gradual reopening meant we were more proactive than many other parts of the world.

Media One remained open despite lockdown, albeit on a skeleton scale, which allowed us to get back on track very quickly.?We reopened our F&B venues, gradually got back to rebuilding our business and broke even by September.?And Dubai hasn’t looked back ever since, it has been brilliant.?The traction we gained from that was outstanding; Dubai & the Maldives were the only places you could go to.?The emphasis was on remaining proactive throughout, we had our Dubai EXPO, which brought more traction and showcased Dubai, and the World Cup contributed further.?I’m thankful for having lived & worked in Dubai throughout the pandemic, otherwise I’m not sure I would have still had a job.?

We have come out of this stronger and wiser, and brought a new wave of thinking for what we can learn and grow. We’re in a pretty good place now and must manage expectations after what was achieved in 2022.

?Q.????How do you feel the Media One reflects its destination?

I’m glad you say, ‘Media One’ rather than ‘Media One Hotel’. We are not limited to being a hotel; Media One is a business, lifestyle & entertainment destination, with 264 hotel rooms, 9-10 F&B venues, and 230.000 sq. ft office space.

Media One is an adult-friendly, high footfall destination and we usually have 700 -1000 people coming to work at the office tower. As a destination, we mirror the hustle and bustle of Dubai, we have a melting pot of nationalities working here.?Media One reflects the area of its location; Dubai Media City, with an energy and a buzz you as you walk through the ground floor social space - it really reflects its destination.?In the lobby area, for example, we have 69 decorative monkeys, which reflect the playful side of Media One.?We always try to find quirky ways of reflecting our message and have fun with ourselves and the guests.?When we refurbished the ground floor in 2016, we developed QWERTY – a gastro bar – which also hosts breakfast for our hotel guests, without the all-day-dining syndrome… with clever use of the bar counter and the island bar to accommodate a continental style breakfast offering; with all hot dishes cooked to order. QWERTY – whose name is inspired by the top left letters of many keyboards – then reverts to its gastro bar identity for the remainder of the day.

Another connection of QWERTY with the media are the 3 sheep on show; with their heads and feet made from the base and headset of old traditional telephones and the wool is made of the curly telephone wire.

We decorate the sheep at Christmas or, during the World Cup, with flags.?We celebrated Burns Night and flew the renowned Scottish chef, Paul Wedgwood, over for a special evening; with all our monkeys wearing Scottish kilts! For St. Patricks day they will all be wearing green.?They’re all part of the Media One family

Q.????What is truly unique about Media One?

We are not a hotel, we’re a destination. People’s perceptions of hotels tend to put you into a box.?At Media One, during the day it is a business and lifestyle experience. In the evening and at weekends, the entertainment of the destination comes in. People stay at Media One as an entertainment destination.?We take on different guises, depending on what you want to get out of coming to us, but the residential and business community is so important to us.?We connect with Dubai Marina and local businesses. Our team are trained to offer a relaxed and personalized interaction with all our guests

Our values are fun & personalized, we don’t have badges, instead we have an ‘M’ pin with different colours to depict the length of service of an ‘Enthusiast’ (our way of naming a team member), which sparks conversations and creates a company culture that opens the door to interacting with guests on all levels.?We also have an ‘L’ pin for those in training, taken from the L-Plate idea when learning to drive in England – this ensures that any Enthusiast with an L – Pin feels at ease when interacting with a guest whilst in training.

Q.????Do you have any special features you are particularly proud of? Or a unique space or product?

When we refurbished in 2016, we had a fountain at the main entrance, this has been replaced with a 3-dimensional ‘M’ which reflects the transition of Media One from a more minimal design to a more contemporary design intent, which is further highlighted in our ground floor social space which now flows from our hotel entrance through to the office tower entrance with a more residential look & feel, depicting by the colours of the sea; shades of blue and turquoise. The hotel reception desk has been minimalised and moved away from the main entrance, making it a more intimate arrival and check-in experience.

On the office tower side, the previous reception desk has been replaced with a Grab & Go facility which is the favourite go-to place for all office tower tenants from their arrival morning coffee, to a sandwich on the run, or an afternoon tea. ?

Another element we changed was the all-day dining Mediterranean restaurant on the 8th floor call The Med.?It did not reflect the ‘’spirit’’ of Media One and garden on 8 was created in just 11 days, initially from occupying just the outside terrace into an indoor-outdoor urban garden occupying the entire space of The Med.

The mantra for garden on 8 is simple, social & fun, which encourages all guests to ‘come as you are, be yourself, as you would sitting in your back garden’.?Over the years it has evolved and grown, and has been our most successful venue for a number years, emphasising the important connection to the residential community of Dubai. We have neighbourhood ‘events’ almost every night from bingo & quizzes to live singers and BBQ’s, totally bespoke to people’s definition of sociable fun.

?Q.????What is unpredictable or unexpected about Media One?

When you are at Media One, expect the unexpected!

At Christmas, when we do our decorations, we always do a different theme, from upside-down Christmas trees to a Christmas tree made from 200 footballs for the 2022World Cup, which was over 4 metres high and took 6 hours to build by our engineering and housekeeping teams.

Over the years we have used unique spaces as ‘pop-up’ venues – prior to leasing to an F&B tenant – Level 9 was converted into an underground venue for a ‘break-in’ club night, it was also hosting our 2014 World Cup football fan zone.

We converted the top floor of our carpark on level 7 as an entertainment floor called P7 Arena for live music with specially flown in artists, and local artists that reflect all genres.?We have hosted private parties & product launches, and in March we are launching a custom-car festival with over 1,000 people expected to attend.

On 11th February we will hold our 9th annual M1 run, which is Dubai’s most exciting vertical race.?It’s our connection with the local communities; we start outside the hotel at the giant ‘M’, and it can be entered an individual or team of 4 and it is a 1.2 km uphill run into our carpark from level P1 to P7, followed by entering the stairwell and climbing a further 700 stairs onto the 42nd floor to the finish line!

The race is registered as an official sporting event with the Dubai Sports Council; and officially timed by Premier Online. The record for the M1Run is 6 minutes 31 secs, set by a polish runner who was the tower-running champion and we have even had a competitor in a wheelchair who completed the M1 run backwards! We offer prizes for the top runners; the top prizes are about €1,000 for each category.

Q.????And have you done this?

No, unfortunately I don’t have good knees! But I’m on the microphone shouting encouragement at the finish line!?It’s all about how we connect with our communities and local business partners; we expect around 300 runners. We approach sporting groups and clubs to recruit and connect; last weekend we operated the water station for the Dubai half marathon – it allows us to connect with over 4K runners.?

Q.????Do you have any special events in your calendar?

We do have special guest visits planned. Our guest chef series welcomes two Italian chefs from Sicily in February to do slow food (so sustainable) and show how to create the dishes.?

Dubai hosts COP28, which starts 30th November 2023 and we’re already thinking about preparing ourselves as a business to create compelling reasons to stay with us (and our sustainable practices).

We also support good causes that have business cases behind them. Grohe have their regional office at Media One and we use their Grohe Blu water dispensers to offer sparkling and still water in our glass bottles, which guests can refill as often as they want.?This links into our wellness and lifestyle ethos, living and breathing our promise into our offer.

Q.????What do guests love about Media One? How do they connect emotionally to the brand?

Covid has been a good catalyst to review how we look at our guest journey.?We developed our mobile app. for extending the services we offer to our guest via their smart phone; from accessing the elevator to the rooms, laundry list orders, and we have looked at how we can remove clutter and paper, driving more services through their smartphone. We have asked ourselves how we adapt the guest’s journey through technology and reduce the use of plastic key cards.?

Q.????What is your personal favourite place within the hotel itself??And why?

I always like to be ‘on the go’, I like to hang out in the office tower lobby and grab a coffee, and love walking through the ground floor to watch the world go by, to see & greet people.?I see all kinds of people from Media City, our hotel guests and our Enthusiasts, this walk through the entire ground floor is my downtime.

Q.????What will be top hospitality trends in 2023? And What trends are Media One going to adopt?

Sustainability is evolving at a fast rate; we scratched the surface just before Covid, but by June 2021 we were committed to moving it forward.?We started to meet monthly and set objectives with a committee, we track everything that we consume, everything we waste, we have had motivational guest speakers and got some great ideas that work in hospitality and F&B.?

We have now committed to using electricity only derived from renewable/solar sources. We tied up with local experts Element Six to guide and advise us on how to achieve this. It is an additional cost, but well worth it when we think on the impacting it is making and it reiterates our commitment to our sustainability mission and vision.?

We are now plastic-free, all complimentary guest bottled water is produced by us in our water bottling plant in bespoke Media One glass bottles, we also have a no-straw policy, if one is requested it is biodegradable.?

We have completed green key certification and this is further demonstration that our ongoing operating practices continue to be environmentally responsible. Only 3% of hotels in Dubai have this certification, which is 30 out of 900 Dubai hotels.?

Currently, we are undertaking a trial with a company call FoodLab, which is about composting food waste, if this is successful, we will roll this out to all our F&B outlets.?We also recycle all of our cooking oil with a local company called Neutral Fuels, which converts this into renewable fuel and also issues us with the corresponding carbon credits.?

We have one dish on each of our menus that supports the HSBC One Plate initiative which means dishes are developed using cuts of food that would usually be discarded or not used, e.g., the cheek of the salmon, which is great meat but often discarded.

Q. ?Why does it continue to be a good partnership with Worldhotels??What makes it a great fit?

We like the autonomy that we get with WorldHotels, and the association it gives us as our extended sales team. ?Over the years it has proven to be a proactive, honest relationship and it has worked well, and it's hopefully a win-win.?We are quite a tough client and will fight our battles quite strongly, the business that we generate from the WorldHotels network benefits us both.?Over the years we have worked very well together, and whilst are quite demanding, we work well as a team, it’s a good collaboration and we’ve always got good responses out of it, we drive each other.

Q.????What is your vision for the future?

From a business perspective Media One needs to continue to evolve.?It’s easier said than done, we have come from a record year so how do we beat that??Revenues and profits are one thing, but the business culture is another way of evolving, and our sustainability practices are yet another.?For 2023, we have a senior team of 7 and an extended leadership team with different objectives; M1 training, M1 sustainability, M1 Welfare, and M1 cares.?We have divided our teams into subgroups with dedicated leaders to achieve each objective.?

We will kick off M1 learning 2023 and that is how hopefully Media One evolves in the right direction.?With M1 Welfare, the landscape has changed over time to try to achieve a better work/life balance; hours are getting longer, so we must evolve to create that balance and measure engagement in our team.?We have two surveys a year, and our Net Promoter score, on the question ‘would you recommend Media One as a great place to work?’?gave us a score of 76%, which means we are doing things better than before, but we still ask ourselves how we can continue to improve as an organisation.?

Some new initiatives include a ‘birthday -off’ and we are currently finalizing a ‘Fighting Fit’ award, which would premium an Enthusiast with additional paid days off if they have worked the whole year without falling sick.

Q. Do you have a parting insight to leave us with?

We do not consider ourselves as just a hotel, we are fortunate with our location and space that has enabled us, over the years, to create a business, lifestyle & entertainment destination.?As a result of hard work & dedication by our team of Enthusiasts we have, over the years, managed to maintain ourselves at the forefront of hospitality in Dubai, within an incredibly competitive marketplace. ?

Interview by Jo