Interview
Gate One Airport Hotel enters the market
Business Slovakia talks to Jana Lehocká, General Manager of the newly-opened Gate One Airport Hotel.
I am about to enter the newly opened four star Gate One Hotel, situated a brisk eight-minute walk from Bratislava airport and just the other side of the road from the Avion Shopping Park. With its glass-framed structure and bold, irregular white lines, the building looks more like part of a modern airport terminal or the trendily-designed head office of some successful software company than a typical hotel. But that after all is quite refreshing. Why not be innovative!
The hotel lobby is also a little different. Just above my head, stretching for about 20 metres, is an array of crystal decorations, 142.000 of them I believe - the largest crystal display of its kind in Europe. Otherwise the hotel reception and restaurant and bar area is spacious and well-planned. Just like the black and white of the building, there seems to be a conscious desire to avoid bright colours - its all soothing greys and browns and shades of beige. But that’s ok. The main effect is light streaming in.
What is also different about Gate One Hotel is how carefully it has planned to capture a piece of the budding conference business in Slovakia. You go up in the lift to the first floor and you come out into a room which is potentially almost the full size of the hotel. This is billed as the largest top-quality conference facility in Bratislava. But massive moveable screens can turn this large space in minutes into eight smaller conference rooms, making Gate One endlessly flexible in terms of hosting conferences. It is a good idea and should work even in these subdued economic times.
Actually I was never sure Gate One would make it off the ground. I noticed the building more than a year ago but then found out that although it looked almost finished, all work had stopped. That’s it, I thought. A victim of the recession, built for better times and put on hold indefinitely. Then suddenly at the beginning of December 2009, the hotel opened. Managing Director Jana Lehocka takes up the story.
“The idea of Gate One started back in 2005. Since that time I have been talking to the investor about this project. I was acting as a consultant for him in the hotel business. Originally the investors planned a divided use with one third for office space and the rest for a hotel. Then this became just one floor of office space and finally they decided to make the whole building a hotel. It is true that in 2008 the project was stopped for more than six months as there was disagreement amongst the investors. The ownership structure changed and then construction continued. We used local architects and they came up with a concept that is new and something different. We didn’t want to make it look like other hotels. In fact it doesn’t really look like a hotel at all, not even our 121 rooms look like typical hotel rooms. The investor came up with the name Gate One because it is after all an airport hotel. So we plan for it to be the first point of departure or the first destination for visitors arriving at the airport.’’ We are sitting in one of the executive apartments, all understated, muted colours, and ultra-modern furniture. We have just visited the obligatory wellness centre, but this one is nicely laid out with a fitness area Jacuzzi, hot and steam sauna, massage area and interestingly, an upstream pool, where you literally swim against the tide.
“But it must have been difficult to open after such a recession year?’’ I suggest. “Of course we are disappointed by the failure of Sky Europe,’’ Jana Lehocka tells me, “and the general decline in business at the airport. We had prepared contracts with Sky Europe. On the other hand we think the market can only grow here. We like the Metropolis entertainment project slated for Jarovce. This is the kind of large project that will bring significant numbers of visitors to Bratislava.”
“And how have things gone so far?” I ask. She smiles. ‘’What has really surprised us is the interest we have in our conference facilities right from the beginning.We opened on December 1st 2009. We held our first event on December 4th. We had already held nine events by the end of December including a Christmas party for 600 people. We have just hosted a large conference at the end of January where all our rooms were booked. Yes it is difficult to set the system so that each every department cooperates effectively together, but we’re doing OK. We just got a call today to arrange a couple of small conferences tomorrow, (smiles). Of course it is difficult to predict the future. Most bookings are only two weeks prior to arrival. We do know though that in December 2010 we’ll be hosting a conference of 500 Slovak dermatologists! Our logical clientele are companies based around this area and would estimate about 60 percent of our guests will be international and the rest Slovaks.’’
Jana Lehocka is a veteran of the Bratislava hotel industry having worked in the Holiday Inn for nine years, first as assistant to the General Manager, then sales manager, conference manager and food and beverage manager. More recently she was General Manager at the Hotel Devin. She joined Gate One in July 2009. “I was responsible for recruiting the managers in each section,’’ she tells me. “There have been some positives about the economic crisis for Slovakia. For example a lot of people came back from abroad who had gained valuable experience in the hotel business.’’
We move down to the spacious hotel restaurant for a coffee. It is lunchtime and though not crazily busy there are a significant number of customers. I like the atmosphere. “We started buffet menus for lunch for 9,90 euros on January 11th,’’ Jana Lehocka explains. “It is already going well. We are serving up to 50 lunches catering mostly for the businesses around us.’’ I can see it is the location of Gate One that is its greatest advantage, surrounded by a large number of international businesses and on the doorstep of the airport. As I leave I philosophise on the boldness of human endeavour. Hotels like this open up without any solid guarantee that customers will materialise. Customers do materialise and the hotel rapidly becomes an established institution. Such is progress.
