“It makes more sense for us to have an office in this part of the world as we have more hotels in the west coming along now, and many of our key markets are also here,” said Jolivet.
As part of the growth in London, Christina Deeny has also been appointed group head of global sales, reporting into chief marketing officer Lisa Bovio, who is also new to the company and based in the London office.
Deeny is well known in the sector and joins directly from Belmond. She will be hosting one of the group’s first ever trade sales roadshows at the end of February, bringing over seven general managers to meet with key tour operators in London and the north-west.
New resorts for the group will debut this year in Playa Grande, Dominican Republic; Lijiang in China; and Shima in Mie Prefecture, central Japan, which will join the most recent opening, Aman Tokyo, one of the group’s few urban settings. It occupies six floors of the 38-storey Otemachi Tower in the city’s business district.
Jolivet said Japan is the third biggest guest market for the group - after the US and UK - and said Aman will open more hotels in Japan in coming years, including the project in Shima and a potential one in Kyoto.
“We will have 30 hotels by the end of the year, but it’s not part of some huge aggressive expansion strategy - we will still ensure each hotel is small and personal, but we have to keep growing where our guests want us to. We are keen to find hotels in South America and Africa for example,” he said.
A project in Portugal’s Alentejo region could soon join its other European hotels, such as Amanzoe in Greece, while a project scoping out five lodges in national parks in Gabon is still on the drawing board.
Jolivet added the group was also looking at several projects in Mozambique and said a project combining a tented camp in the Galapagos with a hotel in Ecuador’s Quito would also be desirable, as would projects in Mexico and Peru.
The Dominican Republic project will have 40 rooms and 40 residential villas set around a golf course in “one of the most beautiful locations in the Caribbean” and will complement the group’s other Caribbean resort, Amanyara in Turks & Caicos.
As well as it placing an office between Europe and the US, a bigger London base also makes sense for the new owner of Aman, Russian property billionaire Vladislav Doronin.
A self-confessed Amanjunkie, he was part of a consortium of investors who bought the group last year for £235 million, but controversy has followed the deal ever since, with ongoing lawsuits in London and New York.
Last year the High Court in London ruled on an interim basis that Doronin wasn’t validly appointed as CEO following the sale, although Doronin is fighting back.
Jolivet steers the company for now and is keen to point out it is “business as usual” as the group looks to its openings for the year and the enhanced marketing strategy.
