As hospitality evolves, leading with purpose goes beyond aligning teams and processes. Rotana Hotels’ cluster GM Kozhaya Tannous shares what it truly takes to lead with clarity, impact and long-term value today.
What changes most when you move from leading one hotel to overseeing a full cluster?
Transitioning from a single property to a cluster role requires a shift from operational focus to strategic leadership. Therefore, the priority becomes driving alignment across multiple assets, ensuring brand consistency and optimizing performance through shared efficiencies. Equally, it is about empowering leadership teams, standardizing best practices and leveraging synergies to enhance both commercial results and guest experience. While each property retains its distinct positioning, the cluster approach enables a more agile and cohesive response to market dynamics. In turn, it strengthens competitiveness and long-term value creation.
What does “leading with purpose” mean to you in today’s hospitality landscape?
Leading with purpose is about delivering sustainable value across all stakeholders: guests, colleagues, owners and communities. Additionally, it requires clarity of vision, consistency in execution and a strong people-centric approach. In today’s environment, purpose-driven leadership also means embracing innovation, maintaining operational discipline and upholding the highest standards of integrity. Therefore, by fostering an engaged culture and aligning teams around clear objectives, we ensure that every decision contributes to enhancing the guest experience while supporting long-term business resilience and growth.
How do you balance sustainability goals with guest expectations?
Sustainability and guest satisfaction are increasingly interconnected. Therefore, we focus on implementing efficient, responsible practices into operations without compromising comfort or service quality. Beyond this, we practice resource management, implement environmentally conscious initiatives and work with responsible supply chains. Furthermore, clear communication and subtle integration ensure that sustainability enhances, rather than disrupts, the guest journey. Consequently, by aligning environmental responsibility with operational excellence, we create value that meets both current expectations and future demands.
What are your plans?
Our plan with the team is to strengthen the presence of the Edge brand within the Riyadh market. Furthermore, we aim to deliver consistent performance, thus reinforcing market positioning and offering a differentiated guest experience across the cluster. This approach is supported by enhanced commercial strategies, investment in talent development and effective use of technology to improve efficiency. In parallel, we are building strong partnerships within corporate and local markets to expand reach and drive demand. Moving forward, our objective is to sustain growth, uphold brand standards and position current and upcoming Edge properties as leading choices.
