EUROPE
IFA HI’s staff housing business, too, has proven an essential asset. Named Domus, the venture has identified a gap in the market for highquality and cost-effective worker accommodation, and IFA is close to finalising its first project which will house 6,500 staff in Dubai, to be expanded over the next few years. “In Dubai, 85 percent of the population is expat,” Sita says, “and a large percentage of those people are blue collar workers that need to be accommodated, fed, and transported. Nobody else is offering that at the level of quality Domus will.” In the company’s client advisory business, an experienced group of consulting and operational professionals looks after IFA HR’s global portfolio, managing $1 billion worth of assets and overseeing pre-development, pre-opening, and operational services. “We carved this service out based on the asset management of our own hotels,” says Sita. “Obviously we own a number of hotels both in the region and globally, and so my client advisory team
looks after the day-to-day asset management of those properties. That’s our core business, and in the seven years I’ve been here, we’ve grown that business.”
Supply chain Logistics and procurement can be complicated in the hotel industry. Sita’s colleagues in IFA Hotels & Resorts Middle East has a team responsible for the delivery of hotel & residential projects, which is undertaken with the operators’ input through third party procurement companies that specialise in very large contracts. “In our business, procurement covers a number of different areas,” says Sita. “For example, in our facilities management business – which involves various flexible B2B and B2C services – we are procuring parts for all of the buildings we operate. That’s a big network. We have a team to look after procurement; it’s not a very large part of our business, but it’s very important. We pay a lot of attention to it and we certainly try
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