Day in the life: Rotana COO keeps things hands-on

As the chief operating officer of the UAE hotels group Rotana, Guy Hutchinson likes to "test the product" himself by dropping into as many hotels as he can over the course of the week.

Guy Hutchinson says he and his wife keep things strict during the week so they can relax on the weekend. Delores Johnson / The National

Guy Hutchinson is the chief operating officer of the UAE hotels group Rotana. Born to a British father and French/South African mother in Venezuela, he has lived in Brazil, Peru, France and the UK, attended high school and university in South Africa and worked in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Tokyo, Australia, Shanghai, Beijing and New Delhi. The 49-year-old joined Rotana in January 2014 from a senior role with Hilton Worldwide. A Star Wars fan, he lives in Mangrove Village, Abu Dhabi, with his wife, Kinga.

5.55am

My wife and I have no kids but we have a Siberian husky called Saba and a golden retriever, Jedi. We start our day by cycling with them for 30 minutes. We also have a gym at home where I work out for half an hour.

7.20am

My wife is a fitness freak so breakfast is extremely healthy, normally a protein shake and fruit or yoghurt, maybe some eggs. The drive to work takes nine minutes in good traffic – the office is in Capital Centre – and I’m in just before 8am.

7.55am

The first thing I do is go through financial results of the hotels for the previous day. We have 58 trading. We opened in Kinshasa (in the Democratic Republic of Congo) in December, beginning our sub-Saharan expansion. Rotana has gone from initial start-up as a UAE-based company to a leading hotel chain in the Middle East. I was brought in because I have experience across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Australia, and our direction is to position Rot­ana as a global hotel company.

9am

I sit with one of our vice presidents. We have one responsible for revenue management and distribution, and I go through with him how hotels are evolving, from a revenue perspective, over the next three months.

10am

Different things happen across the week, but after that meeting I meet another VP. We are looking at summer in Abu Dhabi, what we’re doing with our loy­alty programme. From an operational perspective our hotels are divided across four regions and I have four operational VPs who manage regions.

1pm

Lunch tends to be a 10-minute affair, just salad and a protein. I try to make a habit of being in our hotels at critical meal times in the week; I’ll drop in for breakfast, for lunch, pass through at dinner times. We’re very much a hands-on organisation. I see what it looks like, get a feel for the quality, see how customers are being served.

1.30pm

I kick off a meeting with our general managers in Abu Dhabi to go through current issues in the market. Earlier this week there was one in Dubai, so I was in Dubai for that. We deliberately move it around. I manufacture as many opportunities as possible to see as many hotels as often as I can. You’re testing the product. It’s also opportunity to interact with teams, speak to staff. Our business is a people business. It’s about driving that culture of hospitality.

3pm

Back to the office. Generally, every day, I have an hour with our president. We’re going through planning our annual conference; setting content, guest speakers, structure, what we want to achieve. Half an hour is spent talking about our operations in Turkey. We’re opening a third and fourth hotel in Istanbul.

4pm

I meet one of our biggest partners in the UAE, a large travel supplier that deals a lot with government and corporate clients. This one will do probably 10,000-15,000 room nights with us a year. I have direct relationships with the principals of these companies to make sure our hotels are servicing them properly, iron out any hiccups. I meet a lot of key customers. I build open relationships so they can pick up a phone to me.

5pm

Every day there’s a certain amount of contractual and procurement documentation that requires my authorisation, which is how I finish my day in the office.

6.30pm

I’m home. Generally there’s something on. My wife teaches fitness classes so we might pass each other in the hallway for 10 minutes. I’m a keen golfer so I go to the driving range at Abu Dhabi Golf Club to spend 45 minutes honing the game.

8.30pm

My wife and I connect at home. We’ll cook dinner; salad and grilled proteins, fillet of fish, breast of chicken or a steak. We keep it as healthy as possible. I’m very strict during the week so on the weekend we can relax. During the week we’re flat-out. A couple of evenings we’ll be out, to entertain and meet customers.

9.45pm

I relax and watch TV. I’m really enjoying Westworld. I read only on weekends, but I’m reading Trevor Noah’s autobiography. Because I have a bit of history in South Africa I can relate to it. I go to bed at 11pm.

Follow The National's Business section on Twitter