The Phoenicia;
grande dame of Malta’s hotels
It would seem to many of us that The Phoenicia Hotel in Floriana has been there forever. It has been a
figurehead in Malta’s tourism drives from the early Twentieth century right into the Twenty-first. Now
the grand old lady of Malta’s hoteliering has had a total wardrobe makeover over 16 months …. and
after a staggering investment in the renovation she’s looking better than ever!
Hospitality Malta spoke to Gordon Campbell-Gray and Charles Azzopardi, The Phoenicia’s intern ational
management chairman and her general manager respectively, to see how their synergy couples with
this significant investment to bring out a unique new Phoenicia - not only the grande dame of Malta’s
hotels but now a truly modern and prestigious hotel that uniquely provides a luscious snippet of our
Islands and their history to its gobsmacked guests.
words by Jason Attard
“T
here
will always be a place for a grand
hotel but not for a stuffy hotel,”
is how Gordon Campell Grey
started off our time together. “To
be honest, I’ve always wanted to
restore a grand hotel, but not to
make it feel merely prestigious -
but to make it feel as The Phoenicia
actually does right now,” he con-
fessed.
HOSPITALITY MALTA
Gordon explained that Campbell
Gray hotels’ mission statement
highlights that it intends to al-
ways be the market leader. When
I pressed Gordon to detail, I in-
ferred that Campell Grey’s state-
ment referred to both the man-
agement company’s own values
and objectives as well as to those
of the hotels in which it becomes
involved. “In The Phoenicia’s case,
this has been particularly pleas-
ing, seeing as how close our mu-
tual core values are. “I don’t want
to be the busiest hotel on the Is-
land either. While I do want us to
be highly successful, I am more
obsessed with the detailing at the
top, the kind of quality that we
do; everything that makes a cli-
ent happy. And once we have all
the ingredients in place, the right
staffing, the right pricing, the
quality service - as we do - then
the bottom line will automatically
come too. That is the experience
SEPTEMBER | 2017
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