Minute on the clock: Jean-Luc Naret, executive director of the Set Collection

The executive director of the Set Collection has changed the group’s focus to promotion. He talks about knowing what a hotelier wants and having one establishment in every city

The Set Collection was more of an operational group, but now it’s moved into the representation and marketing consortium space. Can you tell me about that?

The Set Hotels used to be owned and managed hotels, and that included Hotel Café Royal in London, the Conservatorium in Amsterdam, the beautiful Mamilla in Jerusalem and the Lutetia in Paris. All the hotels belonged to Leading Hotels of the World, but we felt that we were not being supported in a way that we needed to be, so we decided to create a tool together to promote and sell the hotels in terms of distribution, revenue and marketing.

But we looked at it and said, why should we keep that for ourselves? I’m sure there are a lot of hoteliers around the world that would love to be part of our collection because we have the know-how.

It’s a company that is designed by hoteliers for hoteliers and we have the hotelier in mind. Now we’re going to expand the brand. We’re going to have 30 hotels by the end of the year, and each of them will be unique in their destinations – we don’t want them to compete, so we select one per destination.

The objective will be to have 120-150 hotels in three years, but each will be unique; they won’t be the same as the hotels we have in the collection today. The hotels won’t be a part of any group and they will be privately owned, but they will need some recognition with us and that’s the reason they’re going to join us.

Would you have another hotel in London?

No, for the time being we want each hotel to be the only one in a city. If the demand is strong, why not have one in a different location, but for the time being, the objective is to have one per city. My real job is chief curative officer, because I’m going to curate a list of hotels and try to convince them to join us in a very short time.

Are you targeting any more UK hotels?

Not for the time being, but the UK is a big country. People are looking now not for the uniformity of the brand but the uniqueness of the proposal.

What are you looking for in a property?

We’re not only going to be in cities, we’re going to be present in beaches as well – my background is in Mauritius, and in the Maldives, for example, we’re looking at hotels where the owners have a very strong interest in the hotel. It’s a long-term relationship. They won’t be with us to promote the hotel for two years, it will be a long-term commitment. They will have to share our values and have an artist’s point of view. We’re not looking at 300- or 500-bedroom hotels, we’re looking at reasonably sized hotels, which is exactly what we have now in the collection – between 150 and 200 rooms.

And the hotels can keep their own branding and identity?

We’re not trying to put the name on the door, that’s for sure. Our job is really to try to help them and we have many different ways to do that. Some hoteliers are very hot on revenue distribution, some of them are not, so we’re going to help them with that. We have the structure already for the Set Hotels. We have all the sales offices around the world and anytime they want to join us for a salesroom meeting, that’s going to be part of it.

Presumably there will be a cost for being a member?

Of course, it will start with a membership fee and there will be add-ons. It’s quite minimal compared to other similar organisations. For me, that’s exactly the point. Our job is really to make sure that they are comfortable with it – we won’t take the membership fee and then leave them alone. The fee will be based on revenue distribution, so the more revenue distribution they have, the better the commission.

What are the plans for Hotel Café Royal specifically?

Both the restaurants and bars are closed and we’re changing the concept. We’ll have some great news in April with a new addition to the hotel and a couple of new creative ideas. Our restaurant Cakes & Bubbles Albert Adrià is busy every single day because it has great access to the street. For the rest of the food and beverage, we’re going to have another great chef coming in soon.