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JULIE CRAMER » JOURNALIST » SPA BUSINESS
SIMON NAUDI
Corinthia Hotel London is the latest offering in the UK capital’s fi ve-star market. The group’s director explains how the fl agship site will shape the Maltese company’s global expansion
F
or a brief spell in an earlier career, Simon Naudi’s job took him to war zones, and allowed him to meet famous fi gures such as George Bush
Senior, President Gorbachev and the Pope.
“I was working as a journalist for the Times of Malta and because it was a small island you got to meet everyone,” he says. More than two decades on, Naudi’s pas-
sion is now fi ve-star hotels – and his task is to take a fl avour of Malta out into the world. For the past 15 years he has been at the right-hand of Alfred Pisani, the crea- tor of Corinthia Hotels – a family-founded Maltese hotel group that has fl ourished in fl edgling markets and is now poised to take its place on the wider international stage. With the spring 2011 opening of the £305m (us$500m, €345m) Corinthia Hotel Lon-
The 1001 crystal bauble chandelier, by Baccarat, hangs in the main lobby and is an unavoidable talking point
don – the company’s fi rst fl agship hotel in a major western European capital outside Malta – Naudi knows the eyes of the hotel world will be upon them. He says: “Until now we’ve mainly sought out opportunities in emerging markets and our brand is very well regarded in countries like Russia, Hun- gary and the Czech Republic. But London will give us a diff erent platform of visibility – it will put us on the global map.”
LIBYA LINK
The London opening, however, has not been without its hitches. One investor in the Corinthia group is the Libyan Foreign Investment Company (Lfi co) which is owned by the Libyan government and has been a non-controlling shareholder in Corinthia since 1974, now owning a third of its holding
company, International Hotel Investments (IHI). T ere are 3,100 other shareholders including the founding Pisani family, who still control and run the business, and Istith- mar Hotels of Dubai. With Libya in turmoil and the Gaddafi
regime subject to economic sanctions, there was press speculation that Corinthia London wouldn’t be able to open because of its invest- ment links. Prior to the launch, the company says it obtained all necessary approvals from the UK Treasury to continue trading nor- mally and to reassure its customers. Corinthia issued a statement saying the
running of its business will not be aff ected as it does “not involve making available any funds to a designated entity prohibited by sanctions”. Naudi says simply: “We do not get involved in politics, we are hotel operators.”
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SPA BUSINESS 3 2011 ©Cybertrek 2011
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