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Celebrity Life

The Hari Hotel Throws its First Anniversary Cocktail Party

The Hari Hong Kong First Anniversary Cocktail

How times flies. The Hari Hotel in Hong Kong opened its doors just a year ago to offer guests luxury accommodations well in the heart of the city, bringing a touch of sophistication and distinct London charm inspired by its English counterpart.

Celebrating its one-year anniversary, the hotel threw an intimate gathering for its supporters and friends at the Lounge and Lucciola Restaurant and Bar. Guests were treated to Brazilian dance performances at the party, as well as entertainment by psychic entertainer Stuart Palm.

Spotted at the party were the Harilela family, as well as friends such as Ankie Beilke, JuJu Chan Szeto, Anthony Szeto, Brandon Chau, Leonard and Candice Chao, and Anil and Sophia Melwani.

The post The Hari Hotel Throws its First Anniversary Cocktail Party appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

What does the hospitality industry look like in times of a pandemic?

Hong Kong hospitality titan Dr Aron Harilela shares his thoughts on guiding his business through Covid-19.

The post What does the hospitality industry look like in times of a pandemic? appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

What does the hospitality industry look like in times of a pandemic?

Harilela Group

Hong Kong hospitality titan Dr Aron Harilela shares his thoughts on guiding his business through Covid-19.

For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.

Something About Hari: Aron Harilela Goes Solo

Seated in a corner suite in The Hari, his soon-to-be-completed hotel on that indistinct border where Wanchai and Causeway Bay wash into each other, Aron Harilela looks relaxed and very much at home. The hotelā€™s soft opening is planned for just a few weeks away, and every one of the floors beneath us is a cacophony of rattling and whining hammer drills, clumping work boots and the clatter of planks and scaffolding. Cables dangle from ceilings and the air is a soup of concrete dust and wood shavings, but if Harilela is concerned about the progress of the first hotel bearing his eminent familyā€™s name ā€“ or, to be more accurate, a shortened version of it ā€“ to open in his home city, he certainly doesnā€™t show it.

Virtually a Hong Kong dynasty, the Harilela family has been in the hospitality business for half a century, so why did it take so long for them to go the whole hog and manage their properties themselves? ā€œFor years we had one business model,ā€ explains Harilela, ā€œwhich was to either build or buy hotels, and then give them to third- party management ā€“ Holiday Inn, InterContinental, Hilton, W, etcetera. But after 45 years of doing this, the world has changed and the landscape is very different from what it was even 20 years ago. I thought that the hotel market was ripe for something different, with little niches here and there where you could place your hotel.

ā€œSo I said letā€™s do our own hotel, and in about 2010 we started to renovate our London property. At that point I wanted to run the hotel ourselves, but some people in the office said, ā€˜Listen, what are you doing? We donā€™t run hotels, we asset manage.ā€™ Weirdly enough, though, my father was very much in favour of running it ourselves. To cut a long story short, we didnā€™t, but four years later I said, ā€˜Right, sorry guys, weā€™ve had enough, weā€™re going to do it ourselves.ā€™ā€

The Hari Hong Kong Opens Its Doors on December 12.

Aron Harilela of The Hari Hong Kong
Aron Harilela

After consulting with a branding company on possible names ā€“ Harilela says they considered brands based on locations, feelings and personal or family names ā€“ they eventually plumped for The Hari, a ā€œmixture between our truncated family name and my fatherā€™s name, which resonated with usā€. Also, he says, ā€œItā€™s a name that can travel, it has some gravitas, you can have it in London, you can have it in Bangkok and you can have it in Hong Kong and I donā€™t think itā€™s out of place anywhere. It would have been silly to call it The Chesham ā€“ our London propertyā€™s in Chesham Place, but what does that mean anywhere else?ā€

Fashioned out of an existing hotel and with just 85 rooms, the London Hari is considerably smaller than its newer sibling in Hong Kong, though there are definite similarities, not least in the fact the famed designer Tara Bernerd was responsible for the interiors of both.

ā€œWhen we started on the London hotel,ā€ says Harilela, ā€œa hotelier friend, Jason Pomerantz, said, ā€˜Youā€™ve got to get Tara to do this,ā€™ even though sheā€™d only ever done residential properties before. I said to him, ā€˜Sheā€™s never done hotels, are you crazy?ā€™ But Tara and I got on really well and we created something in London that I think really hit the mark. Itā€™s luxurious but itā€™s not crazy luxurious and you really feel relaxed ā€“ you feel as if you want to come back, regularly.

ā€œI wanted to keep that DNA, so I told Tara that she had to do all The Haris ā€“ I donā€™t want them to look exactly the same but thereā€™s a masculinity to it. Itā€™s not refined luxury and itā€™s certainly not very feminine.ā€

Aron Harilela's hote, The Hari Hong Kong, opens its doors this month

Ever a dapper dresser, Harilela today is clad in a bespoke suit in an especially flamboyant blue-and-grey Prince of Wales check, so it seems obvious that the hotelā€™s look and ambience would also reflect his personal style. ā€œFor the first project in London,ā€ he says, ā€œIā€™d literally walk into Taraā€™s office and say, ā€˜I love that tweed jacket, and those grey flannel trousers. Thatā€™s what I want to do with the hotel.ā€™ Not only the decor and the clothing, but also in the style of the service. Iā€™m not very poncey and formal, Iā€™m just not. I donā€™t want to arrive at a restaurant and everyoneā€™s saying, ā€˜Sir,ā€™ twenty-five times ā€“ I mean, just shut up, Iā€™m eating my food. And Iā€™d rather chat with the staff. Maybe it isnā€™t casual, but itā€™s certainly not formal, which isnā€™t the easiest thing to do in Hong Kong, because people are used to that hierarchy.

ā€œIf you give me two exact-same hotels, exact-same rooms, exact-same room rates and you go downstairs and one has a buzzing bar and the other one, you go in and the guy says, ā€˜Er, would you like a cup of tea?ā€™ Iā€™d go to the one with the buzzing bar. When you see what our Japanese restaurant looks like ā€“ itā€™s not designed like a traditional Japanese restaurant. Itā€™s not all bamboo and dark, weā€™re going to have pumping music and itā€™s got nothing to do with Japan or Japanese restaurants except the food. Weā€™ve just got a chef from Matsuhisa in Aspen, and Iā€™m so excited about it.ā€

Harilela isnā€™t the least bit fazed by the discrepancies in location between the London and Hong Kong hotels. ā€œIt doesnā€™t matter that the Haris in London and Hong Kong are in very different areas,ā€ he says. ā€œActually, Belgravia [in London] isnā€™t the best place to put a hotel, because itā€™s very residential, itā€™s not that close to the City and the Tube station isnā€™t that close either, but we really spruced that place up and weā€™ve done well with it. Itā€™s very London, though, and this is very Hong Kong.

ā€œA few years ago, when we did the W in Sydney, Iā€™d never been there before. It was in Woolloomooloo ā€“ and a friend of mine said: ā€˜Do. Not. Touch. Woolloomooloo. Just donā€™t touch it, itā€™s terrible. Itā€™s full of gangs and crimeā€¦ā€™ But going to Sydney with new eyes, the one thing I realised was that you go west and you go east and everything is developed, but also that people also love places that are on the water. The hotel is on the water and itā€™s just a 10-minute walk through the most beautiful botanical gardens to the CBD. This was a pocket that was so overlooked and underdeveloped, and I think itā€™s the same for where we are in Wanchai.ā€

Ā 

There's a masculinity to it ā€” it's certainly not very feminine

Aron Harilela

As for Londonā€™s 85 rooms compared to Hong Kongā€™s 210, Harilela admits that ā€œthis is going to be a massive test for us. We can do it in London, but this is a bigger product, itā€™s our home base and it involves much more investment, because we bought the land, bought the buildings, tore them down and built this from scratch. So we have to get this right. And if we do, then our expansion plans ā€“ well, weā€™ll have to think it out. Can we go bigger, 320 rooms? Because thatā€™s the next bracket where the economies of scale really make sense.ā€

And then, of course, thereā€™s Covid-19 looming above everything ā€“ and, not least, the hospitality industry. ā€œWell,ā€ says Harilela, ā€œyou canā€™t open at 90 percent occupancy anyway. You start with 30 percent and then you nudge it up and you nudge it up again. So thereā€™s only going up from here. We canā€™t go back down ā€“ all economies would be on their knees, so weā€™ll have no option but to open up the borders at some point. People are social animals. Will we be social distancing on planes? Yeah, for a little while, but once this is over I think that everything will go back to normal. I think weā€™ll go back to what we know best.

ā€œAll those years ago when my father built the Holiday Inn Golden Mile, it was at the end of the ā€™60s, the riots in Hong Kong had just happened and a lot of his external shareholders said, ā€˜Iā€™m out.ā€™ This is the first hotel Iā€™ve ever built, and then Covid comes along and I said, ā€˜Come on, this canā€™t happen again!ā€™ā€

The post Something About Hari: Aron Harilela Goes Solo appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Something About Hari: Aron Harilela Goes Solo

Seated in a corner suite in The Hari, his soon-to-be-completed hotel on that indistinct border where Wanchai and Causeway Bay wash into each other, Aron Harilela looks relaxed and very much at home. The hotelā€™s soft opening is planned for just a few weeks away, and every one of the floors beneath us is a cacophony of rattling and whining hammer drills, clumping work boots and the clatter of planks and scaffolding. Cables dangle from ceilings and the air is a soup of concrete dust and wood shavings, but if Harilela is concerned about the progress of the first hotel bearing his eminent familyā€™s name ā€“ or, to be more accurate, a shortened version of it ā€“ to open in his home city, he certainly doesnā€™t show it.

Virtually a Hong Kong dynasty, the Harilela family has been in the hospitality business for half a century, so why did it take so long for them to go the whole hog and manage their properties themselves? ā€œFor years we had one business model,ā€ explains Harilela, ā€œwhich was to either build or buy hotels, and then give them to third- party management ā€“ Holiday Inn, InterContinental, Hilton, W, etcetera. But after 45 years of doing this, the world has changed and the landscape is very different from what it was even 20 years ago. I thought that the hotel market was ripe for something different, with little niches here and there where you could place your hotel.

ā€œSo I said letā€™s do our own hotel, and in about 2010 we started to renovate our London property. At that point I wanted to run the hotel ourselves, but some people in the office said, ā€˜Listen, what are you doing? We donā€™t run hotels, we asset manage.ā€™ Weirdly enough, though, my father was very much in favour of running it ourselves. To cut a long story short, we didnā€™t, but four years later I said, ā€˜Right, sorry guys, weā€™ve had enough, weā€™re going to do it ourselves.ā€™ā€

The Hari Hong Kong Opens Its Doors on December 12.

Aron Harilela of The Hari Hong Kong
Aron Harilela

After consulting with a branding company on possible names ā€“ Harilela says they considered brands based on locations, feelings and personal or family names ā€“ they eventually plumped for The Hari, a ā€œmixture between our truncated family name and my fatherā€™s name, which resonated with usā€. Also, he says, ā€œItā€™s a name that can travel, it has some gravitas, you can have it in London, you can have it in Bangkok and you can have it in Hong Kong and I donā€™t think itā€™s out of place anywhere. It would have been silly to call it The Chesham ā€“ our London propertyā€™s in Chesham Place, but what does that mean anywhere else?ā€

Fashioned out of an existing hotel and with just 85 rooms, the London Hari is considerably smaller than its newer sibling in Hong Kong, though there are definite similarities, not least in the fact the famed designer Tara Bernerd was responsible for the interiors of both.

ā€œWhen we started on the London hotel,ā€ says Harilela, ā€œa hotelier friend, Jason Pomerantz, said, ā€˜Youā€™ve got to get Tara to do this,ā€™ even though sheā€™d only ever done residential properties before. I said to him, ā€˜Sheā€™s never done hotels, are you crazy?ā€™ But Tara and I got on really well and we created something in London that I think really hit the mark. Itā€™s luxurious but itā€™s not crazy luxurious and you really feel relaxed ā€“ you feel as if you want to come back, regularly.

ā€œI wanted to keep that DNA, so I told Tara that she had to do all The Haris ā€“ I donā€™t want them to look exactly the same but thereā€™s a masculinity to it. Itā€™s not refined luxury and itā€™s certainly not very feminine.ā€

Aron Harilela's hote, The Hari Hong Kong, opens its doors this month

Ever a dapper dresser, Harilela today is clad in a bespoke suit in an especially flamboyant blue-and-grey Prince of Wales check, so it seems obvious that the hotelā€™s look and ambience would also reflect his personal style. ā€œFor the first project in London,ā€ he says, ā€œIā€™d literally walk into Taraā€™s office and say, ā€˜I love that tweed jacket, and those grey flannel trousers. Thatā€™s what I want to do with the hotel.ā€™ Not only the decor and the clothing, but also in the style of the service. Iā€™m not very poncey and formal, Iā€™m just not. I donā€™t want to arrive at a restaurant and everyoneā€™s saying, ā€˜Sir,ā€™ twenty-five times ā€“ I mean, just shut up, Iā€™m eating my food. And Iā€™d rather chat with the staff. Maybe it isnā€™t casual, but itā€™s certainly not formal, which isnā€™t the easiest thing to do in Hong Kong, because people are used to that hierarchy.

ā€œIf you give me two exact-same hotels, exact-same rooms, exact-same room rates and you go downstairs and one has a buzzing bar and the other one, you go in and the guy says, ā€˜Er, would you like a cup of tea?ā€™ Iā€™d go to the one with the buzzing bar. When you see what our Japanese restaurant looks like ā€“ itā€™s not designed like a traditional Japanese restaurant. Itā€™s not all bamboo and dark, weā€™re going to have pumping music and itā€™s got nothing to do with Japan or Japanese restaurants except the food. Weā€™ve just got a chef from Matsuhisa in Aspen, and Iā€™m so excited about it.ā€

Harilela isnā€™t the least bit fazed by the discrepancies in location between the London and Hong Kong hotels. ā€œIt doesnā€™t matter that the Haris in London and Hong Kong are in very different areas,ā€ he says. ā€œActually, Belgravia [in London] isnā€™t the best place to put a hotel, because itā€™s very residential, itā€™s not that close to the City and the Tube station isnā€™t that close either, but we really spruced that place up and weā€™ve done well with it. Itā€™s very London, though, and this is very Hong Kong.

ā€œA few years ago, when we did the W in Sydney, Iā€™d never been there before. It was in Woolloomooloo ā€“ and a friend of mine said: ā€˜Do. Not. Touch. Woolloomooloo. Just donā€™t touch it, itā€™s terrible. Itā€™s full of gangs and crimeā€¦ā€™ But going to Sydney with new eyes, the one thing I realised was that you go west and you go east and everything is developed, but also that people also love places that are on the water. The hotel is on the water and itā€™s just a 10-minute walk through the most beautiful botanical gardens to the CBD. This was a pocket that was so overlooked and underdeveloped, and I think itā€™s the same for where we are in Wanchai.ā€

Ā 

There's a masculinity to it ā€” it's certainly not very feminine

Aron Harilela

As for Londonā€™s 85 rooms compared to Hong Kongā€™s 210, Harilela admits that ā€œthis is going to be a massive test for us. We can do it in London, but this is a bigger product, itā€™s our home base and it involves much more investment, because we bought the land, bought the buildings, tore them down and built this from scratch. So we have to get this right. And if we do, then our expansion plans ā€“ well, weā€™ll have to think it out. Can we go bigger, 320 rooms? Because thatā€™s the next bracket where the economies of scale really make sense.ā€

And then, of course, thereā€™s Covid-19 looming above everything ā€“ and, not least, the hospitality industry. ā€œWell,ā€ says Harilela, ā€œyou canā€™t open at 90 percent occupancy anyway. You start with 30 percent and then you nudge it up and you nudge it up again. So thereā€™s only going up from here. We canā€™t go back down ā€“ all economies would be on their knees, so weā€™ll have no option but to open up the borders at some point. People are social animals. Will we be social distancing on planes? Yeah, for a little while, but once this is over I think that everything will go back to normal. I think weā€™ll go back to what we know best.

ā€œAll those years ago when my father built the Holiday Inn Golden Mile, it was at the end of the ā€™60s, the riots in Hong Kong had just happened and a lot of his external shareholders said, ā€˜Iā€™m out.ā€™ This is the first hotel Iā€™ve ever built, and then Covid comes along and I said, ā€˜Come on, this canā€™t happen again!ā€™ā€

The post Something About Hari: Aron Harilela Goes Solo appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

Something About Hari: Aron Harilela Goes Solo

Seated in a corner suite in The Hari, his soon-to-be-completed hotel on that indistinct border where Wanchai and Causeway Bay wash into each other, Aron Harilela looks relaxed and very much at home. The hotelā€™s soft opening is planned for just a few weeks away, and every one of the floors beneath us is a cacophony of rattling and whining hammer drills, clumping work boots and the clatter of planks and scaffolding. Cables dangle from ceilings and the air is a soup of concrete dust and wood shavings, but if Harilela is concerned about the progress of the first hotel bearing his eminent familyā€™s name ā€“ or, to be more accurate, a shortened version of it ā€“ to open in his home city, he certainly doesnā€™t show it.

Virtually a Hong Kong dynasty, the Harilela family has been in the hospitality business for half a century, so why did it take so long for them to go the whole hog and manage their properties themselves? ā€œFor years we had one business model,ā€ explains Harilela, ā€œwhich was to either build or buy hotels, and then give them to third- party management ā€“ Holiday Inn, InterContinental, Hilton, W, etcetera. But after 45 years of doing this, the world has changed and the landscape is very different from what it was even 20 years ago. I thought that the hotel market was ripe for something different, with little niches here and there where you could place your hotel.

ā€œSo I said letā€™s do our own hotel, and in about 2010 we started to renovate our London property. At that point I wanted to run the hotel ourselves, but some people in the office said, ā€˜Listen, what are you doing? We donā€™t run hotels, we asset manage.ā€™ Weirdly enough, though, my father was very much in favour of running it ourselves. To cut a long story short, we didnā€™t, but four years later I said, ā€˜Right, sorry guys, weā€™ve had enough, weā€™re going to do it ourselves.ā€™ā€

The Hari Hong Kong Opens Its Doors on December 12.

Aron Harilela of The Hari Hong Kong
Aron Harilela

After consulting with a branding company on possible names ā€“ Harilela says they considered brands based on locations, feelings and personal or family names ā€“ they eventually plumped for The Hari, a ā€œmixture between our truncated family name and my fatherā€™s name, which resonated with usā€. Also, he says, ā€œItā€™s a name that can travel, it has some gravitas, you can have it in London, you can have it in Bangkok and you can have it in Hong Kong and I donā€™t think itā€™s out of place anywhere. It would have been silly to call it The Chesham ā€“ our London propertyā€™s in Chesham Place, but what does that mean anywhere else?ā€

Fashioned out of an existing hotel and with just 85 rooms, the London Hari is considerably smaller than its newer sibling in Hong Kong, though there are definite similarities, not least in the fact the famed designer Tara Bernerd was responsible for the interiors of both.

ā€œWhen we started on the London hotel,ā€ says Harilela, ā€œa hotelier friend, Jason Pomerantz, said, ā€˜Youā€™ve got to get Tara to do this,ā€™ even though sheā€™d only ever done residential properties before. I said to him, ā€˜Sheā€™s never done hotels, are you crazy?ā€™ But Tara and I got on really well and we created something in London that I think really hit the mark. Itā€™s luxurious but itā€™s not crazy luxurious and you really feel relaxed ā€“ you feel as if you want to come back, regularly.

ā€œI wanted to keep that DNA, so I told Tara that she had to do all The Haris ā€“ I donā€™t want them to look exactly the same but thereā€™s a masculinity to it. Itā€™s not refined luxury and itā€™s certainly not very feminine.ā€

Aron Harilela's hote, The Hari Hong Kong, opens its doors this month

Ever a dapper dresser, Harilela today is clad in a bespoke suit in an especially flamboyant blue-and-grey Prince of Wales check, so it seems obvious that the hotelā€™s look and ambience would also reflect his personal style. ā€œFor the first project in London,ā€ he says, ā€œIā€™d literally walk into Taraā€™s office and say, ā€˜I love that tweed jacket, and those grey flannel trousers. Thatā€™s what I want to do with the hotel.ā€™ Not only the decor and the clothing, but also in the style of the service. Iā€™m not very poncey and formal, Iā€™m just not. I donā€™t want to arrive at a restaurant and everyoneā€™s saying, ā€˜Sir,ā€™ twenty-five times ā€“ I mean, just shut up, Iā€™m eating my food. And Iā€™d rather chat with the staff. Maybe it isnā€™t casual, but itā€™s certainly not formal, which isnā€™t the easiest thing to do in Hong Kong, because people are used to that hierarchy.

ā€œIf you give me two exact-same hotels, exact-same rooms, exact-same room rates and you go downstairs and one has a buzzing bar and the other one, you go in and the guy says, ā€˜Er, would you like a cup of tea?ā€™ Iā€™d go to the one with the buzzing bar. When you see what our Japanese restaurant looks like ā€“ itā€™s not designed like a traditional Japanese restaurant. Itā€™s not all bamboo and dark, weā€™re going to have pumping music and itā€™s got nothing to do with Japan or Japanese restaurants except the food. Weā€™ve just got a chef from Matsuhisa in Aspen, and Iā€™m so excited about it.ā€

Harilela isnā€™t the least bit fazed by the discrepancies in location between the London and Hong Kong hotels. ā€œIt doesnā€™t matter that the Haris in London and Hong Kong are in very different areas,ā€ he says. ā€œActually, Belgravia [in London] isnā€™t the best place to put a hotel, because itā€™s very residential, itā€™s not that close to the City and the Tube station isnā€™t that close either, but we really spruced that place up and weā€™ve done well with it. Itā€™s very London, though, and this is very Hong Kong.

ā€œA few years ago, when we did the W in Sydney, Iā€™d never been there before. It was in Woolloomooloo ā€“ and a friend of mine said: ā€˜Do. Not. Touch. Woolloomooloo. Just donā€™t touch it, itā€™s terrible. Itā€™s full of gangs and crimeā€¦ā€™ But going to Sydney with new eyes, the one thing I realised was that you go west and you go east and everything is developed, but also that people also love places that are on the water. The hotel is on the water and itā€™s just a 10-minute walk through the most beautiful botanical gardens to the CBD. This was a pocket that was so overlooked and underdeveloped, and I think itā€™s the same for where we are in Wanchai.ā€

Ā 

There's a masculinity to it ā€” it's certainly not very feminine

Aron Harilela

As for Londonā€™s 85 rooms compared to Hong Kongā€™s 210, Harilela admits that ā€œthis is going to be a massive test for us. We can do it in London, but this is a bigger product, itā€™s our home base and it involves much more investment, because we bought the land, bought the buildings, tore them down and built this from scratch. So we have to get this right. And if we do, then our expansion plans ā€“ well, weā€™ll have to think it out. Can we go bigger, 320 rooms? Because thatā€™s the next bracket where the economies of scale really make sense.ā€

And then, of course, thereā€™s Covid-19 looming above everything ā€“ and, not least, the hospitality industry. ā€œWell,ā€ says Harilela, ā€œyou canā€™t open at 90 percent occupancy anyway. You start with 30 percent and then you nudge it up and you nudge it up again. So thereā€™s only going up from here. We canā€™t go back down ā€“ all economies would be on their knees, so weā€™ll have no option but to open up the borders at some point. People are social animals. Will we be social distancing on planes? Yeah, for a little while, but once this is over I think that everything will go back to normal. I think weā€™ll go back to what we know best.

ā€œAll those years ago when my father built the Holiday Inn Golden Mile, it was at the end of the ā€™60s, the riots in Hong Kong had just happened and a lot of his external shareholders said, ā€˜Iā€™m out.ā€™ This is the first hotel Iā€™ve ever built, and then Covid comes along and I said, ā€˜Come on, this canā€™t happen again!ā€™ā€

The post Something About Hari: Aron Harilela Goes Solo appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

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