Hilton's special agent?
There's something a little bit James Bond about Wolfgang M Neumann, Hilton UK & Ireland's area president. Perhaps it's the Roger Moore eyebrow, or the fact that he has lived, in his own words, "an international life". Whatever it may be, Neumann's first year running things at Hilton UK & Ireland has certainly been an eventful one.
"It hasn't been the easiest year to come in as the president of a new area for obvious reasons," Neumann says. "I mean, the year has challenged us to the bone, but when you face challenges like this it's always good. It makes you think harder, work harder. And, at the end of the day, I think we have done very well considering the difficult circumstances."
In his first 12 months as area president, Neumann has had to contend with what industry experts have called the worst year the hotel industry has seen in 30 years. But he seems to have enjoyed the challenge, perhaps even revelled in it.
The 007 in Neumann springs to mind again when he starts describing how he views Hilton and the way it responds to change.
"People always think Hilton is this huge organisation," he says. "With 78 hotels and 60,000 rooms it looks like a big tanker. Yes, we are a big organisation, but we are made up of many little speedboats that can react fast."
Following the decline in trips to the UK by high-spending international visitors, Hilton has had to do just that.
"We are a big brand and a very well known brand, but the philosophy of how we operate the business is very much understanding what is happening in the market and being very quick to turn things around - not only on a support office basis but also in the hotels themselves," Neumann says.
"With the economic difficulties that happened all over Europe, the business was heavily challenged and we had to rely more on the domestic market. Very quickly we launched a campaign to make sure that we captured the leisure market in the UK."
By doing so, Neumann says, the group was able largely to replace the lost international business, albeit at a reduced rate.
But it hasn't all been trying to make up for lost business for Neumann since taking over from Grant Hearn, who left Hilton to join the booming budget sector, heading up Permira's Travelodge chain of hotels.
Since Neumann became area president, Hilton has spent some £50m on developments and has just taken over control of one of London's best-known hotels.
On 5 January, the Waldorf in Aldwych became the Hilton Waldorf. The five-star hotel was one of 11 Le M‚ridien properties reclaimed from the company by their owner, the Royal Bank of Scotland, following the build-up of massive debts at the hotel chain and a falling asset value.
Alongside that, the group also hopes to open a new £30m, 254-bedroom hotel in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, early this year. The property was scheduled to open its doors in August last year, but problems between the developer and the construction company have kept pushing the opening date back. Although frustrating for Hilton, which has had to cancel several bookings because of the delays, Neumann refuses to get too angry about the situation. Instead he remains optimistic: "It's going to be a beautiful hotel and with all this talk about delay, delay, delay people forget that this is going to be a superb location. I am very much looking forward to having this hotel in the portfolio."
In 2006 the group will open its first hotel in Manchester. The £150m, five-star hotel will be in the heart of the city centre. The 47-storey, 285-bedroom property will also feature Manchester's first "sky bar" on its 23rd floor and a glass tower that will become the tallest structure in the city at 157m high - with a glass "blade" increasing the height of the hotel to 171m. Opening the same year is a new four-star, 272-bedroom hotel at Canary Wharf in London.
Hilton has also just signed deals for a further three hotels, including one in London and two in cities in the North of England. Neumann won't divulge exactly where the new properties are but it is understood that the hotel in the capital is at London Wall in the City.
Aside from responding rapidly to changing market forces and growing the group's portfolio of hotels, Neumann is essentially a people person. His priority for 2004 is Hilton UK and Ireland's 15,000 employees. If he can make them happy, he says, then he can make his customers happy and get them coming back to Hilton time and time again.
"This is the fundamental core that drives everything," Neumann says, "so the priority is really to look towards these 15,000 people. If people feel good about themselves and know how they fit into the organisation then they can deliver good service"
Once he has achieved that, Neumann says, his second priority this year is to change people's perception of Hilton. He reckons people think of Hilton as "a bit stiff" and upper class. He wants to open the group up to more people and show them that four- and five-star hotels can be informal, and that they don't have to be suited and booted to enjoy a drink, a meal or a stay at a Hilton hotel.
His third and final task for the year - and something in his eyes says it's the one he is most excited about - is to "knock the socks off the competition".
"We have to be better than them," Neumann says. "We have to protect the number one position in the UK. Marriott is catching up, but it's a fun race that I enjoy, it's a good race. It stimulates us to give our best, to go beyond."
But there is a still more surprising threat to Hilton than Marriott, InterContinental, Four Seasons or any of the other upmarket hoteliers. It's not the re-emergence of Sars or more terrorist attacks, it's not even the massive growth of the Internet. It's budget hotels: it's the Travelodges and Travel Inns of this world that Neumann is keeping a close eye on.
"We need to be aware in the four- and five-star market that the budget hotels are a challenge to us, and we have to get better at explaining to the customer that for a relatively small price increment they can actually get a big difference in terms of service and experience.
"As part of our winter campaign at Hilton you can now have two nights for two people bed and breakfast for £99, with the first night's dinner included. Now try and find this in a budget hotel. You'll get better rates, but you don't get much of an experience."
Of course, Hilton could bring the Scandic chain of hotels it bought for £612m back in 2001 over to the UK and use it to challenge the budget sector. Industry observers have been mooting the arrival of the group in the UK for sometime now, with many saying Hilton should transfer some of its lower-end four-star hotels to the chain.
But Neumann, who was instrumental in the integration of the three-star Scandic hotels into the Hilton portfolio, says the name will not be appearing in the UK just yet.
"Scandic is a brand that has potential but there are no plans at the moment to roll it out in the UK. We are looking into rolling it out across Europe and at franchising it, but not in the UK."
As well as trying to grab hold of the discerning customer, another major challenge for Hilton and the hospitality industry as a whole this year is the Disability Discrimination Act, which comes into force in October. Neumann says making Hilton hotels more accessible to disabled people will cost the company about £6m.
He says the group looked at how it catered for disabled hotel guests and realised it could do better and should do more. In response he has appointed a disability champion who will help Hilton UK and Ireland do this. Michael McGrath, who has muscular dystrophy, will take up the position when he gets back from his expedition to the South Pole later this month.
"He will help us to make our hotels more accessible, and to think through the eyes of a disabled individual," Neumann says.
"What Michael does is reach beyond. He is a disabled person who goes beyond what people think he is capable of doing. To me there is a lot in it for us because there is also a message to our people that we can do more."
And that's what Neumann expects in the coming year.
"It was a difficult year for us in 2003, but I am an eternal optimist by nature so I refuse to look at all the reasons why business could be bad. I look on the bright side and I think there are reasons for us to look forward to 2004.
"The travel industry has always gone in cycles and we are seeing encouraging signs. We need to focus on our core - and that, to me, is our people - and on making sure that our guests have the best experience. If we do that, everything else will come by itself."
Hilton UK and Ireland
Hotels: 78
Rooms: 60,000
Employees: 15,000
Turnover: £294m*
Profit: £34.1m*
Revenue per available room: £53.62*
** six months to 30 June 2003*
Wolfgang Neumann
Neumann was born in Austria in 1962 and is married with three children. He trained at the College of Hotel and Restaurant Management in Salzburg and is fluent in English, French, German and Dutch. He began his career with Hilton in 1984 as a corporate management trainee at the World Trade Center in New York. Hilton used to operate the Marriott hotel at the World Trade Center and also ran the corporate food service in the two towers. In 1992 Neumann transferred to Brussels before spending time managing Hilton hotels in London, Paris and Frankfurt. In 1999 he was promoted to senior vice-president for the Belgium, Netherlands and German regions. Two years later he was promoted again and became senior vice-president of Hilton International Nordic region. Then, on 1 February 2003, he took up his current position of area president of Hilton UK and Ireland.
