directly with us online, offering them
a variety of benefits. This includes
a complimentary seasonal food and
beverage offer carefully selected by
our local hotel teams, allowing each
guest to experience a taste of what
the hotel and city has to offer.
How important are online reviews
and personalized communication with
guests?
Online reviews and personalised
communication play an important
role in regards to maintaining
relationships with current guests and
how we are positioning ourselves to
new audiences. Each of our hotels
carefully monitor their review sites,
feeding back both positive and
negative reviews to the wider team
to ensure that we can consistently
improve our offerings.
Sites such as TripAdvisor are always
going to play an important role in
the research phase for prospective
guests so we ensure the channels are
carefully managed. In regards to the
digital space we are aware that online
reviews, especially on sites such as
Google, are important for the hotel’s
search performance and with the
introduction of Google Hotel Finder
and TripAdvisor’s Instant Book we are
aware that the guest can complete
their booking without needing to visit
our branded site, making our presence
even more important.
Has metasearch levelled the
distribution playing field?
By allowing the hotels to bid through
metasearch, I wouldn’t say it has
levelled the playing field but it has
definitely given us a slice of the pie! In
comparison to the majority of hotel
companies OTAs still have much
larger budgets to work with allowing
them a strong presence, however
meta is allowing the hotels to have
an active opportunity to increase
direct bookings and generate brand
awareness in a space which we didn’t
have access to before.
How do you motivate your team?
How have you arrived at your
leadership style?
Despite having a large team, I work
with every individual very closely.
Rocco Forte Hotels is a familyrun business. As most people will
know, Sir Rocco founded it in 1996
with his sister Olga who is Director
of Design for the group. Now his
daughters Lydia and Irene Forte are
working in the business, looking after
restaurant concepts and spa concepts
respectively. With a family at the
helm, it is a really great example
of having strong and very familiar
relationships with your colleagues. It
creates a warmth in our team and I
am often told that this comes across
to our guests. To create this, we are
very hands-on at every level.
How else are you responding to the
current wellness trends?
Sir Rocco’s daughter, Irene, has
lead this area for the past year and
resulting from her focused efforts,
we have just launched Rocco Forte
Spas. The program has been created
to allow guests looking to both keep
up their existing health and wellness
habits whilst travelling, as well as
looking to learn new ones.
The new proposition unites our spa
ethos and offering across our ten
hotels. Our new beauty product line,
Forte Organics, was created using
olive oils and natural ingredients from
Verdura Resort in Sicily - flagship
spa. These are also used for our new
Rocco Forte Rituals, which are spa
treatments which can be experienced
at all of the hotels.
We have also launched Rocco
Forte Nourish, offering guests
healthy InRoom Bar options,
replacing the usual Pringles with
kale chips, coconut water instead
of wine, and many other options.
We also partnered with well-known
nutritionists and healthy eating
chefs — such as Madeleine Shaw,
bestselling author of Get the Glow,
who will be creating healthy menus in
our restaurants offering options free
of gluten, dairy and refined sugars.
As someone who travels constantly
for work, I am delighted that our
hotels are leading the way in this
important area.
ILHA 17