Interview with Robbert van der Maas, Artyzen | “citizenM hotels are perfect for Macau”

Robbert van der Maas, President Artyzen Hospitality Group

Artyzen, the hotel management arm of Shun Tak Holdings, has partnered with Dutch hotels citizenM, to develop an innovative concept of luxury but affordable hotels in first tier Chinese cities, gateway cities like Macau and key capital cities in Asia.
“We are looking at opportunities in the peninsula as we speak,”
Robbert van der Maas, 57, President of Artyzen Hospitality Group, told the Times last week when his company announced its latest hotel project in Shanghai, a RMB700 million deal which is under planning in a new complex strategically located in the Chinese mega-metropolis. Location, centrality, tradition and arts is the name of the game. Currently, Shun Tak’s subsidiary is developing hotels in Taipei (citizenM), Beijing (Artyzen) and in nearby Hengqin, on the border crossing with Macau (citizenM).
Mr van der Maas is also overseeing the two hotels Shun Tak operates in the region: Grand Lapa and Grand Coloane, the latter undergoing a much-needed renovation.
“We are going to bring back those properties to their glory days,” the veteran hospitality executive told MDT, adding they want to create “a flash back sensation” in the hotels they have and plan to develop.
The philosophy behind the brands is to bring “art, culture and emotional wisdom to life in a unique and contemporary way to provide culturally rewarding guest experiences.”
A Dutch national, born in Suriname with Portuguese ancestry on his mother’s side, Robbert van der Maas has over 30 years experience in upscale hotel management, mostly in Asia – from the Maldives to India, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan. He first came to Macau in 2007 to work at MGM as Vice President of Hotel Operations. In 2012, Ms Pansy Ho put him in charge of New Hotel Developments, a division of Shun Tak that later, in 2013, evolved into the Artyzen Hospitality Group.
Zitan, Artyzen Hotels & Resorts, citizenM and a fourth brand for extended stays (to be announced soon) integrate the group’s portfolio which caters to the more mature, informed and culturally-thirsty tourist of the new millennium.

MDT – How do you differentiate the three main brands of Artyzen Hospitality Group?
Robbert van der Maas – Firstly, Artyzen’s vision is to build successful hospitality brands that bridge cultures between East and West, engendering pride among the local communities, and which are admired by travellers the world over. In conceptualizing our brands a lot of research has been done to establish our philosophies. We believe that the industry has a great opportunity to reinvent itself and become less of a commodity provider and more of a life-style industry. Being an Asian Hotel Management company, we envisaged creating brands for different market segments based on Asian values which would be enriching and aspirational, which provide culturally rewarding experiences and which result in lasting memories and subsequently create loyalty.
We concluded that we would characterize our brands with heritage, history, art, culture, etc., all seamlessly connected by intuitive service models.
Our Zitan brand is our luxury brand modeled on the contemporary evolution of the art of Chinese fine living and refined by our “GuanJia” service delivery. Zitan hotels focus on Chinese culture and traditions, history and art and will be found in ambassadorial locations not only in key cities in Asia, but also in Europe and the US and would be mainly city hotels with some very select resorts.
The Artyzen brand has a different positioning. It’s a five star hotel reflecting the spirit of its host location through culture and history but also the region’s crafts which may be contemporized or even reinvented. Artyzen hotels should be the venue of choice for local celebrations and events and be recommended by local communities as the venue of choice as it reflects their city or region. Artyzen hotels can also be city center hotels, a resort or even an airport hotel, or convention hotel.
And then citizenM. Artyzen has a JV agreement with citizenM from the Netherlands. Positioning is very important for this brand too as it caters to “mobile citizens”, frequent travelers who aspire to affordable luxury and great service in a creative and stimulating setting. citizenM hotels will be found in primary cities and within that, in the main commercial or entertainment areas. That’s where this brand flourishes. If we go suburban or to secondary cities, the brand will not flourish.
We are working on our fourth brand, which is an extended stay concept. And we will soon make an announcement on this exciting addition to our brands. With these four brands we are able to cover the main markets in our industry.

MDT – In Macau, you are managing two hotels (Grand Lapa and Grand Coloane). Are you also looking for opportunities to develop citizenM hotels?
RVDM – Absolutely, we believe citizenM is a perfect brand for a city like Macau. As I’ve shared with you some of the attributes of the brand, it’s a very efficient brand. It’s a brand that brings with it a commitment to the local culture, to cater to the mobile customer, often the shorter stay customer. Macau, as you know, has a very short average stay. It’s a lifestyle brand where our customers feel cared for. There is nothing like that in Macau today. We believe that with our commitment to culture, our commitment to the service delivery, and especially the [human resource] efficiencies given the labor situation in Macau, it is a perfect hotel to operate in Macau.

MDT – What are you looking for exactly in Macau in terms of location; where would you consider ideal to develop citizenM?
RVDM – Our prime focus will be from the NAPE district towards Senado Square.

MDT – And old buildings in downtown Macau, will that be of interest?
RVDM – Old buildings may be a challenge for this brand purely because of the specific attributes and site requirements of the brand. You would have to do conversion, and often the column grids or the window grids may be a challenge. So we’re looking more at a new build type of opportunity. But we certainly will look at conversions if we come across the right opportunity.
MDT – As you know, Macau lacks land, space. So that will be a challenge…
RVDM – That’s exactly our opportunity, because for this brand we only need a very small footprint. We’re looking at somewhere between 5,000 to 7,000 square meters [GFA] as a minimum, which should be achievable in a city like Macau.

MDT – Another interesting concept is that you make deals with landowners, property owners. How does it work?
RVDM – We are predominantly a management company. Occasionally we look at strategic investments. But we look at a management proposition in the citizenM model where we share part of the risk with the owners. In the hotel environment, you often have fee structures that are based on a percentage of revenue and a percentage of profit. We are fairly ready to discuss other structures which are more towards the profit delivery side rather than the fixed fees, or a percentage of revenue fees.

Zitan (the top brand) is inspired by a Chinese hospitality philosophy, the Guanjia, which takes “a holistic and all-inclusive approach to ensure the overall well-being of the guest”

MDT – You have a model of high profitability from investments on a medium-scale basis with mid-scale hotel costs, and have profitability margins of top-scale operations. How do you achieve that?
RVDM – Site selection is obviously the key to success. As a result, in order to be able to achieve this, we are extremely selective as to the cities we go into and the sites and locations within these cities. citizenM is a model that is very much focused on a particular customer base. And if the ingredients are right, if the size of the plot is right, if the critical mass in terms of the number of rooms that we can build is correct, then we can achieve a very high efficiency with this model. As a result, we say to the owners, “If you let us manage your property, our focus is to achieve these types of returns and we’d be happy to take some of the risk in the business.”

MDT – Here in Macau, would you also partner with the gaming operators? Anything going on?
RVDM – We will certainly look at it. But there are no current negotiations.

MDT – You’ve been in the business around 30 years, all over the world, mostly Asia. As a keen observer, for you what has been the fundamental change in the hotel business over the years?
RVDM – In the 60s and 70s the hotel industry had a philosophy that wherever the travellers would travel, they would be “home away from home”. So the restaurant concepts (such as the typical coffee shop), menus, the interiors, from even the “soap dishes ‘till the shower curtains”, they were all recognizable through the brand. So if you as a traveller would go overseas, you would have the comfort of being in a familiar environment going back to your hotel.

citizenM brand, founded in Holland, has hotels in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Glasgow, London, Paris and New York

MDT – Does that have to do with the kind of tourist that we had at that time?
RVDM – That is correct. The first who started to travel internationally on a large scale was the American market. They were very advanced with their airline programs and reservation systems. They developed hotel chains and franchises in the 1960s and 70s and they spread their brands internationally fairly quickly. It was really the beginning of this international personal travel – not just business or governmental, but personal travel – they created that comfort level into the product.
In the 80s and 90s that changed. Travellers became more aware, more interested in culture. Europeans were always much more interested in the more exotic locations through their history and they would travel more into Asia and Africa, whereby the Americans would concentrate on the “Old World” –
Europe. There was an increasing interest in the culture, the heritage in the host countries where they would travel to. That trend started very strongly in 80s and a number of [hotel] companies changed their model and added local interior designs, local materials, local cuisines, local uniforms and costumes, and tried to model the Western efficiencies and the Western concept with the local flare and style. And that trend was very encouraging and professionally very stimulating

MDT – That’s when you entered…
RVDM – That was about when I got into the industry. As a European, obviously, I love to travel. I selected the industry as a profession knowing that travel would be a continuing growth industry and I was very excited to see the industry focus, expand and started to adapt their philosophies to the host countries, cities and regions where they were operating.
This process continued but plateaued mainly due to the very rapid expansion of the big brands. Simultaneously, there were other very significant changes, the growth of information technology and the rise of small regional brands and independent hotels. This has greatly affected the way people travel. Today when you make your plans for your vacation, you check out your destination, the location, product offering and features of your hotel restaurants in the area, shopping, sightseeing and tours, and anything you are personally interested in. Our customers today are very informed and know what they look for and make choices of products that match their lifestyle and interests.

MDT – That’s Artyzen’s vision, to cater for the new millennium tourists?
RVDM – Not just the new millennials, but even people my age, the baby boom generation. When we travel today, we want to learn, see, we want to feel and taste what is special. We have described it in our philosophy as “emotional wisdom.” It’s a very important part of our product development. We look at art and history, we look at culture, and for our Artyzen brand look at the crafts that our host destinations are known for and see how we can reinvent these – so that we also give something back to the local communities. Many societies here in Asia have grown so fast that some of their history, heritage and their culture have been forgotten or have disappeared. So it’s great if you’re able to bring that back in different ways and form and with that gain the support of the local community.

“citizenM is a brand that brings with it a commitment to the local culture, to cater to the mobile customer, often the shorter stay customer”

MDT – Your citizenM hotels also partner with high quality local food providers. How does that work?
RVDM – We’re looking in our citizenM hotels at ways to support local products, local bakeries and restaurants that we engage to provide us with their local specialties. So it’s, again, a very efficient model. Our guests have the opportunity to try some of the best local specialties and at the same time we support the local trade. Our CanteenM concept is a very interactive concept. Guests help themselves, but we want to make sure that for their breakfast have the best croissants or Danish pastries in town. For example, here in Macau or China, there’s a great congee and noodle tradition. Rather than building our own delivery for this, we partner with a company that is specialized and could create the right quality consistently for us.

MDT – The fastest growing, huge outbound tourist market is the Chinese. I’m sure you are aware of the ongoing debate about the impacts of these great flows of visitors to Macau. How you can help that with your concept?
RVDM – I am not so concerned about the fact that the consensus today is that the market in Macau is getting too full and over-crowded and that there are too many visitors. I think you will see a big shift in the profile of visitors coming to Macau, and you’re going to see less package tours and see more and more independent travelers – FITs or GITs (who travel as a group, but can do their own programs). And I think that’s the next wave that will benefit the free-standing (non casino) hotels.
I was just in Europe and when visiting some of the cultural capitals there, I was really amazed to see in some of the key cities how many mainland Chinese travelers were there traveling in small groups, and there are also an incredible amount of individual travelers. This trend is growing very rapidly and will benefit Macau in the future.

MDT – One of the catch phrases of your brand, especially citizenM, is for the guest to have luxury at budget cost. How do you achieve that?
RVDM – The philosophy with all our brands is that there’s always a value for money approach. Then there’s the definition of luxury, what is luxury today? It is something different for everyone. citizenM has a fairly small footprint in terms of the guest rooms but has added lots of space in the public spaces, in the form a “living room”, a very interactive area in the hotel that brings the customers together, helps them network, helps them to feel at home rather than sitting up in a room and do their work there, for example. At citizenM, everything the guest touches has a sense of luxury, from the bespoke Vitra furniture, great service, fine linen and real hi-speed internet but you don’t pay an “arm and a leg” for it. Now, is citizenM a low cost brand? No, it’s not. It’s a lifestyle brand offering quality and luxury at a great rate.

MDT – In the mid-term, five years, how many properties do you plan to have for the three brands here, in China and Asia?
RVDM – I don’t like to give specific numbers unlike some of my colleagues in the industry who have recently announced very aggressive growth numbers. We are well on the way to a very good pipeline for our brands. We are discussing some significant opportunities that we hope to announce in the next few months.

MDT – We are not talking big numbers? You don’t want to rush…
RVDM – We are not a company that will trumpet our ambitions. We are very selective in terms of our locations, our products and partners. We feel that with the operation philosophies that we have, we need to focus and ensure that the brands deliver the brand promise and they’re not cookie cutter replicas being rolled out. It’s not about distribution. It is about getting our signature properties in the key cities and build a high quality, highly respected “house of brands”.