Jumeirah is a luxury hotel group, with properties across Europe, the USA and the Middle East. Their offer is built on being bigger, bolder and better than their competitors; they own the world's only 7 star hotel, the Burj al Arab, on the coast of Dubai. As well as being the world's tallest hotel, every 'room' in the Burj is a two story suite with its own personal butler.

 

Jumeirah's mission is to 'stay different'. Our task was to develop an innovation framework to help them do this, and keep the customer in mind. We ran a series of bespoke Big Talks in New York, London and Dubai during the summer of 2007 to help achieve this. Each was a unique event, bringing together Jumeirah staff and the highest calibre of hotel guests. Each session focussed on building the future of the Jumeirah brand and ran over two days, although Big Talks can also be shorter than this.

 

Our challenge was to control and inspire a group of powerful, strong minded and extremely busy people - to get them to cooperate and work together as a team, to listen to us as well as to themselves, and to concentrate on our agenda. We used a series of exercises including building 'the hotel room of the future' and a 'luxury safari'. Specific techniques included creative visualisation, art from within and role playing - all invented to help us collect information and stimulate creativity.

 

From these sessions we were able to explore the consistent themes that make Jumeirah stand out as a luxury brand, and to advise how these themes should be developed through the business as it grows internationally. Plus, of course, we developed a series of brilliant customer-led innovations to help attract and keep customers, and make Jumeirah stand out from the crowd.

 

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