Exceeding Expectations in Dubai


Alumnus Frank van der Post ’84, MS ’84 oversees global operations for one of the world’s most exclusive hotel and resort groups

By Bryan Gilmer

The Jumeirah Burj Al Arab is the sail-shaped hotel tower that has become the icon of Dubai as a 21st century world city. It has been called the world’s only seven-star hotel, and it offers guests a level of luxury few people ever experience.

If you are not arriving via the hotel’s helipad, a hotel staff member will greet you at the airport as you step off your plane and usher you through an express customs lane reserved for Jumeirah guests. Then, your chauffeur will spirit you in the bank-vault silence of a white Rolls Royce to the Burj Al Arab, where “a brigade of highly trained butlers” will attend your every need. A recent Google ad for the hotel proclaimed, “Enjoy rates from only $1,592,” and those not on a budget can spend well over $20,000 per night.

As the chief operating officer of Jumeirah Group, Frank van der Post ’84, MS ’84 is in charge of making sure guests’ experience is worth the money – and not just at the Burj Al Arab, but at all 11 of the company’s elite hotels in Dubai, the Jumeirah Essex House Hotel in New York, two hotels in London and one in Shanghai opening in this year. The portfolio is not limited to hotels, it also includes Jumeirah Living, serviced apartments, Jumeirah Retail and Wild Wadi waterpark.

“We are a luxury hotel company, so our guests’ expectations are high,” van der Post says. “You make sure you deliver. At the end of the day, the building is only one thing. What really creates a key difference in the guests’ experience is the service.”

Van der Post completed a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management and then stayed on at FIU to earn a master’s degree from the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management in December 1984. His time in Miami was part of a journey to one of the most prestigious hospitality executive jobs in the world. Hospitality Associate Dean Rocco Angelo says, “From his days as a student, it was obvious that Frank was going to be in a top executive position.”

The journey began with him washing dishes at a hometown restaurant as a teenager.

“I grew up in the middle part of the Netherlands, and I knew early on that I wanted to go into the hospitality business,” he says. His parents had thought of him becoming a lawyer or banker, but finally, “my dad said, ‘Look, go find yourself a job somewhere in town for 12 months and I will think about it.’”

So at 15, van der Post hit the suds at the little fine dining restaurant, slowly working his way into the kitchen. After high school, he moved to London to work for Hilton, then went to hotel school in the Netherlands. In 1981, he took a food-and-beverage job in Brussels, Belgium, at another Hilton.

He knew he’d found the right career, so he began to look all over the world for further education in hospitality management. The search led him to FIU.

“They had a great reputation,” he recalls. “At the time, they were really trying to get European students.”

FIU gave van der Post the skills he wanted. He says: “FIU was a great complement to the practical things I had learned in the Netherlands, primarily because it focused so much more on the management aspect, on finance, human resources, accounting, computers and marketing.”

Intercontinental Hotels recruited him, and his 21-year career with the company took him to 14 international cities. By 2005, van der Post was Intercontinental’s regional vice president for the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean.

Then Jumeirah Group approached him. His interview in Dubai included the Rolls Royce welcome at the airport, and he called his wife to tell her, “Honey, this job is looking pretty good.”

He began as Jumeirah’s senior vice president for the Americas and in 2007 became COO. Now van der Post oversees the company’s global operations.

“In Dubai alone, we have almost 11,000 colleagues,” he says, using the term he favors for his employees. “Right from the top of the company, there is a focus on people, and that includes colleagues and guests.” The company houses all its colleagues, and it works to model for them the experience it expects them to provide for guests, he says. “They have great rooms, sports facilities, fitness facilities, shopping,” he says. “It’s a high standard. The company who does the landscaping for all our hotel properties does those facilities, too.”

Van der Post says he gained cultural competencies at FIU studying with people from diverse countries – and it’s given him an advantage.

“Prior to coming to FIU, I’d worked in Brussels and England and traveled the world, but that was really the first place I started befriending people not just from the U.S. but from Latin American countries and the Caribbean. FIU gives you a slightly broader perspective on life than you would get elsewhere.”  n

Writer Bryan Gilmer is based in Durham, N.C., and is the author of the new thriller novel Felonious Jazz.

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