Subtlety, elegance imbue Sudima’s new Auckland hotel
The one feature that strikes you as you enter the spacious, well appointed reception area of Sudima Auckland Airport – the city’s newest hotel – is the all round understated elegance.
It’s a fine instance of how subtlety and simplicity can spell class and sophistication much more effectively than glitz and ornateness that so many misconstrue as classiness.
Simplicity, subtlety and elegance imbue every aspect of the spanking new property, beginning from the very concept. The Sudima Auckland Airport positions itself as 'Just Right.'
Explaining its philosophy, director Sudesh Jhunjhnuwala says, 'As a product, the hotel delivers the right service experience that our guest profile would expect at just the right price. We believe we can deliver just the right experience with just the right features at a great price that our customers would consider just right and excellent value for money.'
The Jhunjhnuwalas are no strangers to the hospitality industry. Sudesh’s family, which originally hails from India but has spent long decades in Hong Kong and Singapore have run hotels among a range of other businesses. The family owned Singapore’s Imperial Hotel for nearly three decades before selling it off to another chain in 1999.
The family owns two other hotel properties in New Zealand and one coming up across the Tasman in Brisbane, which will open its doors late next month. The new Sudima Auckland Airport joins Sudima Hotel Lake Rotorua and Sudima Hotel Christchurch in completing the group’s New Zealand based trio.
A ‘fully loaded’ hotel
The Auckland Hotel, built over a span of fourteen months at a cost of $30 million, sports 153 plush rooms – 26 of these being executive rooms and one suite. Every room is equipped with wireless and plug in broadband connectivity and a multichannel television and entertainment system.
In addition, there are four meeting rooms, a large conference facility that has options for hosting banquets and receptions with substantial indoor-outdoor flows and a car park that can hold 170 vehicles.
Rated a four star facility, the six level Sudima Auckland Airport has a sprawling restaurant called Visaya and an eatery, Bistro 18, that is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, sporting an elaborate menu.
Tastefully designed in the same understated manner, the bright and elegant ambience is just right to drive away travel weariness and put one in the right frame of mind for a sojourn in the city or for the onward flight overseas. Located within the restaurant area is the Stonefields Bar serving a wide range of alcoholic drinks and beverages.
The hotel also has a heated, enclosed, all-weather swimming pool and a compact gym on the lower level.
Laxmi Jhunjhnuwala, Sudesh’s highly accomplished artist wife, who also takes an active part in the running of the hotel denies she had any major role to play in the hotel’s understated design philosophy and rich but muted, earthy colour schemes. But it is not hard to see that the denial comes more from her sense of humility, which she shares with her equally soft-spoken husband.
Incidentally, Laxmi’s recent exhibition of paintings and installations at a art gallery on the North Shore received great reviews and was featured in an earlier issue of Indian Weekender. A series of her bright acrylics painted in circular motifs provides a wonderfully bright contrast to the calibrated mutedness of the reception area’s surrounds.
Ecologically responsible
Behind the quiet sophistication of the hotel’s look and feel is a strong commitment to environmental conservation. To begin with, rainwater harvested from the roof of the facility is what is used to flush toilets rather than fresh water, says Sudesh. 'Sustainability is our Mantra.'
A major and rather path breaking decision that Sudesh took while planning the hotel, thanks to his absolute belief in the sustainability mantra, is to dispense with minibars in the hotel rooms. “Our experience everywhere in running hotels has been that minibars are hardly used. They just consume a lot of electricity, need more resources to maintain and have over the years, just become another fixture in hotels.” Guests can instead order instantly from the state of the art digital audiovisual ordering system that is integrated into the room’s television system.
Another innovation, a first for any hotel in the southern hemisphere, is the installation of the chilled beams air conditioning system in guest rooms. The system is far more efficient, offers better individual controls at the hands of guests and is far easier to maintain. 'The initial costs are indeed higher but the payback if great,' says Sudesh.
There are no energy hogging incandescent bulbs anywhere in the property. Instead, the hotel uses the latest light emitting diode (LED) bulbs, which are hugely energy efficient, besides compact fluorescents. Motion sensors activate the lighting in common areas – where lights come on only when someone is around – thereby saving on wanton energy consumption. “It does not seem much, but little things do add up – and it’s good for the city, the country and the planet,” adds Sudesh.
Also, the hotel’s management made sure that its suppliers and service providers like the garbage disposal company had genuine green credentials. “We did a thorough audit and visited their premises to look at their systems before awarding the contracts,” Sudesh says.
Though adjacent to the busy 20A motorway that connects downtown Auckland to the airport, the hotel’s double glazed, sound proof windows shut out all ambient noise.
Qualmark has already awarded the hotel a silver rating and Sudesh is confident that as operations roll on and the hotel adopts other measures stipulated by the rating agency, it will soon be in line for the highest green rating.
Growing in the niche of choice
Sudesh says the group has found its niche in the four to four and a half star space of the hospitality industry. 'We are not in the unit title accommodation or back packer hostels segments and we would not like to go there. Full service business hotels and resorts is our expertise and we would like to stick by that,' he adds, though he believes innovative and trendy products like boutique hotels do deliver a higher profile – but it’s simply not Sudima’s space.
Sudima’s hotels are all single ownership properties not affiliated to any chains domestic or international. In fact, Sudesh is contemplating franchising his own brand to other hoteliers. 'We are about a year away from that activity,' he says.
There are enough Kiwi hotel operators that want to avoid dealing with the big chains and would prefer smaller, proven brands, he says. 'We are small enough and importantly Kiwi enough to attract that segment and offer our expertise.'
'Being small, we are quicker to react to market realities and decisions are made more rapidly and implemented even quicker than in larger chains.' Being small obviously avoids analysis paralysis.
Meanwhile, the hotel is gearing up for the country’s biggest ever event, the Rugby World Cup, which kicks off next week. Like all accommodation around New Zealand, Sudima Auckland Airport is chock a block full throughout the tournament. 'We’re also expecting guests to use our big screen facilities in our meeting rooms to get together and watch their favourite games in the exclusivity of the meeting rooms,' says Laxmi.
The Sudima Group employs 250 staff across its three properties in new Zealand and will see new additions shortly. The new hotel has already signed up corporate deals with the likes of Mainfreight, Progressive Enterprises and Bendon, with the list growing rapidly because of the marketing team’s efforts. Sudima has a corporate office in downtown Auckland.
The one feature that strikes you as you enter the spacious, well appointed reception area of Sudima Auckland Airport – the city’s newest hotel – is the all round understated elegance.
It’s a fine instance of how subtlety and simplicity can spell class and sophistication much more effectively than...
The one feature that strikes you as you enter the spacious, well appointed reception area of Sudima Auckland Airport – the city’s newest hotel – is the all round understated elegance.
It’s a fine instance of how subtlety and simplicity can spell class and sophistication much more effectively than glitz and ornateness that so many misconstrue as classiness.
Simplicity, subtlety and elegance imbue every aspect of the spanking new property, beginning from the very concept. The Sudima Auckland Airport positions itself as 'Just Right.'
Explaining its philosophy, director Sudesh Jhunjhnuwala says, 'As a product, the hotel delivers the right service experience that our guest profile would expect at just the right price. We believe we can deliver just the right experience with just the right features at a great price that our customers would consider just right and excellent value for money.'
The Jhunjhnuwalas are no strangers to the hospitality industry. Sudesh’s family, which originally hails from India but has spent long decades in Hong Kong and Singapore have run hotels among a range of other businesses. The family owned Singapore’s Imperial Hotel for nearly three decades before selling it off to another chain in 1999.
The family owns two other hotel properties in New Zealand and one coming up across the Tasman in Brisbane, which will open its doors late next month. The new Sudima Auckland Airport joins Sudima Hotel Lake Rotorua and Sudima Hotel Christchurch in completing the group’s New Zealand based trio.
A ‘fully loaded’ hotel
The Auckland Hotel, built over a span of fourteen months at a cost of $30 million, sports 153 plush rooms – 26 of these being executive rooms and one suite. Every room is equipped with wireless and plug in broadband connectivity and a multichannel television and entertainment system.
In addition, there are four meeting rooms, a large conference facility that has options for hosting banquets and receptions with substantial indoor-outdoor flows and a car park that can hold 170 vehicles.
Rated a four star facility, the six level Sudima Auckland Airport has a sprawling restaurant called Visaya and an eatery, Bistro 18, that is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, sporting an elaborate menu.
Tastefully designed in the same understated manner, the bright and elegant ambience is just right to drive away travel weariness and put one in the right frame of mind for a sojourn in the city or for the onward flight overseas. Located within the restaurant area is the Stonefields Bar serving a wide range of alcoholic drinks and beverages.
The hotel also has a heated, enclosed, all-weather swimming pool and a compact gym on the lower level.
Laxmi Jhunjhnuwala, Sudesh’s highly accomplished artist wife, who also takes an active part in the running of the hotel denies she had any major role to play in the hotel’s understated design philosophy and rich but muted, earthy colour schemes. But it is not hard to see that the denial comes more from her sense of humility, which she shares with her equally soft-spoken husband.
Incidentally, Laxmi’s recent exhibition of paintings and installations at a art gallery on the North Shore received great reviews and was featured in an earlier issue of Indian Weekender. A series of her bright acrylics painted in circular motifs provides a wonderfully bright contrast to the calibrated mutedness of the reception area’s surrounds.
Ecologically responsible
Behind the quiet sophistication of the hotel’s look and feel is a strong commitment to environmental conservation. To begin with, rainwater harvested from the roof of the facility is what is used to flush toilets rather than fresh water, says Sudesh. 'Sustainability is our Mantra.'
A major and rather path breaking decision that Sudesh took while planning the hotel, thanks to his absolute belief in the sustainability mantra, is to dispense with minibars in the hotel rooms. “Our experience everywhere in running hotels has been that minibars are hardly used. They just consume a lot of electricity, need more resources to maintain and have over the years, just become another fixture in hotels.” Guests can instead order instantly from the state of the art digital audiovisual ordering system that is integrated into the room’s television system.
Another innovation, a first for any hotel in the southern hemisphere, is the installation of the chilled beams air conditioning system in guest rooms. The system is far more efficient, offers better individual controls at the hands of guests and is far easier to maintain. 'The initial costs are indeed higher but the payback if great,' says Sudesh.
There are no energy hogging incandescent bulbs anywhere in the property. Instead, the hotel uses the latest light emitting diode (LED) bulbs, which are hugely energy efficient, besides compact fluorescents. Motion sensors activate the lighting in common areas – where lights come on only when someone is around – thereby saving on wanton energy consumption. “It does not seem much, but little things do add up – and it’s good for the city, the country and the planet,” adds Sudesh.
Also, the hotel’s management made sure that its suppliers and service providers like the garbage disposal company had genuine green credentials. “We did a thorough audit and visited their premises to look at their systems before awarding the contracts,” Sudesh says.
Though adjacent to the busy 20A motorway that connects downtown Auckland to the airport, the hotel’s double glazed, sound proof windows shut out all ambient noise.
Qualmark has already awarded the hotel a silver rating and Sudesh is confident that as operations roll on and the hotel adopts other measures stipulated by the rating agency, it will soon be in line for the highest green rating.
Growing in the niche of choice
Sudesh says the group has found its niche in the four to four and a half star space of the hospitality industry. 'We are not in the unit title accommodation or back packer hostels segments and we would not like to go there. Full service business hotels and resorts is our expertise and we would like to stick by that,' he adds, though he believes innovative and trendy products like boutique hotels do deliver a higher profile – but it’s simply not Sudima’s space.
Sudima’s hotels are all single ownership properties not affiliated to any chains domestic or international. In fact, Sudesh is contemplating franchising his own brand to other hoteliers. 'We are about a year away from that activity,' he says.
There are enough Kiwi hotel operators that want to avoid dealing with the big chains and would prefer smaller, proven brands, he says. 'We are small enough and importantly Kiwi enough to attract that segment and offer our expertise.'
'Being small, we are quicker to react to market realities and decisions are made more rapidly and implemented even quicker than in larger chains.' Being small obviously avoids analysis paralysis.
Meanwhile, the hotel is gearing up for the country’s biggest ever event, the Rugby World Cup, which kicks off next week. Like all accommodation around New Zealand, Sudima Auckland Airport is chock a block full throughout the tournament. 'We’re also expecting guests to use our big screen facilities in our meeting rooms to get together and watch their favourite games in the exclusivity of the meeting rooms,' says Laxmi.
The Sudima Group employs 250 staff across its three properties in new Zealand and will see new additions shortly. The new hotel has already signed up corporate deals with the likes of Mainfreight, Progressive Enterprises and Bendon, with the list growing rapidly because of the marketing team’s efforts. Sudima has a corporate office in downtown Auckland.
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