AUGUST 2010 |
www.opp.org.uk WORDS | Rupert Bates
DEVELOPER Developer profi le
INTERVIEW Kurt Fraser | 61 Right place, right time
Top people talk to OPP: Kurt Fraser has worked across a wide variety of deluxe and destination developments, all around the world. What drives the man behind Proven International and his latest project in Montenegro? Find out more in this, the fi rst in a new series of the OPP Rupert Bates interview.
f it all goes wrong for Canadian Kurt Fraser there is always a job in British tourism.Most of what the man behind Proven International does goes very right in a super deluxe real estate world - success that is down to a range of skills across strategic, creative and marketing disciplines. He also has a Forrest Gump knack of running into agents of infl uence at life-defi ning moments. The only thing Fraser has not been is an Alabama shrimp farmer. Well ... not yet, anyway.
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If you wanted somebody to map the great luxury resorts in the world of recent times you would name Fraser as your cartographer. And yet despite
being seduced by the Seychelles, knocked out by Mexican landscapes and bowled over by Hawaiian sunsets, Britain is now home to Fraser and his young family and the UK is where he is searching for property nirvana. “I am still looking for that perfect piece of land to fall in love with and I believe it is in Britain. I have been spoilt in my career, but one day I will fi nd the perfect place. Perhaps a boutique hotel, or even a resort product which I believe could work incredibly well in the UK,” said Fraser. His photo albums are not groaning with shots of the Indian Ocean or ski- capped Canadian mountains, but scenes
of his kids running through the grass in Cotswolds villages on road trips away. Fraser, with Proven International based in London, lives in Richmond and as he walks along the Thames
“Run through Fraser’s real estate achievements and his products have been best in class”
riverbank you can imagine a master- plan forming in his head.
Fraser has no right to be just 38 and saying “nearly 39” does not help. In this job you get used to property
professionals using superlatives on steroids to push their products. But run through the montage of Fraser’s real estate achievements and hyperbole is justifi ed. From working in his native Vancouver and on resorts such as Whistler (while senior director of marketing at Playground - a division of Intrawest) as well as the Swiss Alps, the vineyards of France and the waters of the Indian Ocean, Fraser’s products have invariably been best in class. “My time in resort marketing at Playground was like getting a Masters degree in development.” Fraser’s latest project is Porto Montenegro in the former Yugoslavia.
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