I&D: Hey Iqbal Latif, Welcome to I&D interviews, I had been chasing fashion since forever, this is how I have always loved to interact with the prominent figures who revolutionize and influence the way people think, who are torch bearers in today’s world and who have the power to bring about “THAT “change in our existing society. Tell us what “Rafayel on the Left Bank” is all about?
IQBAL LATIF: Rafayel on the Left Bank was conceptualized on an eco-friendly policy. It may sound quite simple and generic but the whole concept was far more unique; it hinged upon being environmental and social-specific without compromising on quality and luxury, and achieving this with maximum cost-effectiveness in wake of the debilitating financial crisis that hit the world.  Hotel Rafayel is not simply a “business.” It is a manifestation of a vision, a personal humanistic ideology that is committed to our responsibility towards man, mankind and Mother Nature. 

Creative ideas and thinking outside the box are very important.  Practically every venture in my life has been embarked upon with a somewhat of an outré approach, and Rafayel is one such example.  In my opinion, I think we live in the best of times, in terms of history, where we are extremely fortunate to avail the advancements in technology and this fantastic global connectivity to contribute however and whichever way we can in the service of mankind and to live at peace with nature.  And I believe Rafayel is a paradigm of these beliefs. 

See, back in 1852, the famous Malthus, in his equation of Malthusian crisis, expounded that mankind would destroy itself for the simple reason that we are increasing at a numeric progression – the exponential growth of population versus the arithmetic growth of resources. And then what do we all do? One of the things was technology. It helped us more than Malthus ever realized. He never factored in that one day there would be a tractor that replaced manpower of 1000 and be able to plough acres, or that we would be able to create chains of grains and wheat and rice to exponentially increase the crop. And he never realised we would build dams and overcome the crisis of perennial flow of water. So mankind progresses to a new level of prosperity as a result of technology and this electronic technology is the harbinger of that big growth today, and that is what Rafayel symbolizes.

We have this idea of global warming, exaggerated it may be, but one cannot deny the fact that our carbon footprint here in the West is 25 tonnes whereas in the least-developed countries it is 2 tonnes.  Mankind is confronted with these new challenges of the times and being a realistic environmentalist (some may consider this a contradiction in terms), I strongly believe we need to reduce our carbon footprint, live within our means, avoid tons of wastage, in order to meet halfway and strive towards bringing about a geographical eco-balance.

But we don’t stop there.  We have a very social angle too.  We created jobs in the area and gave opportunity to the lesser privileged who were determined to improve their lot in life, educated and trained them on hotel systems and operations so that they are able to achieve their career goals in the future.  Our approach has been controversial but a deep sense of social responsibility compels us to give everyone an equal chance; we are proud to have gambled and built a team of individuals who share our passion for making our dream a reality.

If you read the overview and mission statement on our website, you would get a sense of what Rafayel on the Left Bank is all about – a  hotel with a heart and soul, quality and luxury, economically sustainable with a lower carbon footprint, with a vision that we want to be nature-friendly.

I&D: A humanitarian, an environmentalist, an International businessman, a civil engineer, and a property developer. How does Iqbal Latif‘s, the Hotelier self kick start his hectic routine?
IQBAL LATIF:  You have to understand that “hotelier” is not an isolated dimension of my persona.  It is part of the multidimensional humanistic fabric of my personality.  A typical day begins with writing on a plethora of subjects.   I am just as voracious a reader as I am a writer, and I write on a number of issues which reflect a completely different opinion. I’m not into conspiracy theories; I see things from a very different angle, give rationality to common media’s hype of the day, or Chicken Little stories, or the sensation of the month.  Be it on global warming, melting polar ice caps, religion, politics, business, war and terror, arts and music, or building a mosque on ground zero site, or the BP oil spill, one would think the sky was falling, but what happened? Nothing.  BP spill was just another disaster like many others where nature took its course and healed itself.  As another example, the latest cricket scandal involving poor talented Pakistani youths.  I opined that our preoccupation with prohibition on betting is the problem since it is considered ideologically wrong in our part of the world, so when something is prohibited it creates an alternate black industry, and if anything goes there, all bets are off.  Instead, making betting an organized industry instead could be a solution, as regulation eliminates the propensity for corruption. 

So, my typical day is not so typical in the true sense of the word.  I am an intense person, it is not sufficient just to write about something but to find a solution. I have my views and analysis on what’s right or wrong, and I can be right at times and wrong in other instances.  The important thing is to find a way out.  Both the hotel blog and my own personal blog are reflective of my “self”.  On the other hand, every day is also spent in educating my team, training them, developing and encouraging creative ideas to enhance and improve hospitality services and achieve maximum guest satisfaction.

I&D: I have been to your website and I’m reading your blog on a regular basis. Are there any other internet marketing tactics you like to speak about? What web deals does “Rafayel on the Left Bank” offer?
IQBAL LATIF: The face of the hospitality industry is completely changing. It’s no longer what it used to be. I see a big challenge in establishing names that have become giant in this industry, like Four Seasons, Sheraton or Marriott because what is happening now is that the task of carving your niche isn’t restricted to local geography or demographics anymore.  Modern global connectivity has transformed the whole world into one giant neighbourhood with no boundaries.  We are capitalizing on that and using this extraordinary modern tool to market our hotel across the board of which the most key factor is “the customer”.  

Customer feedback on sites like TripAdvisor, lastminute.com, laterooms.com, booking.com is so strong that they can decimate a hotel in no time if quality services are not provided. And if you don’t respond to customer requirement adequately, you can be destroyed instantly. These sites become the ultimate arbitrators of the hospitality industry. People are self-reliant, browse and search for responses and they want to see what others have said, so there is a big change; connectivity of the world has changed the future and nature of the hospitality industry. The beast is very different, so much so that if the customer is not happy, they completely bulldoze you. So as a process you have to be very customer-oriented straight off.  And if you want to survive, you have to have the capacity to change and meet customer demand.  As Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”  I have applied this approach diligently and therefore remain inflexibly flexible to ensure Rafayel, with its inherent features, is not only proactive in anticipating customer needs and demands, but reacts positive to guest sentiment and recommendation.  Over and above that, we are very open and honest about our weaknesses, that is why we unabashedly post both negative and positive testimonials on the site.  And indeed our guests show open appreciation for our transparency and therefore honour us with their continued patronage.

Our website is constantly updated with packages and day/month/seasonal offers.  In fact, and in my opinion, we pack in a lot more information than any other hotel’s website.  One doesn’t have to browse a hundred different sites to plan out their activities and city itinerary.  One click and hotelrafayel.com offers an array of recommendations to the visitor.  Hundreds of commendations and thank-you notes is quite a good indication that our approach is well into the right direction.

I&D: What’s the entire capacity of the Hotel?
IQBAL LATIF: Rafayel is a boutique hotel with 65 luxurious “smart” rooms, 15 apartments, conference facilities, bakery, a fantastic restaurant and bar, brasserie, corporate boardroom, library, conference facilities for 150, penthouse and river view event spaces as well as the latest wellbeing spa treatments and gym.

You will be interested to know that the space occupied by the hotel now was originally designed to be a Tesco outlet, even commercial office space.  The whole configuration was angular and awkward but offered a great challenge that took me back to my first love – civil engineering.  I signed on a young newly-graduated team of dynamic architects and set out to give body to my vision.  The most important thing was creating extraordinary space, unlike other hotel rooms in London.  Our rooms are probably the most spacious in London with beautiful scenic views of the Thames that are allowed by floor to ceiling windows giving the guests abundant natural light. 

The remarkable part of the challenge taken on was the ability to offer ultimate luxury without compromising on the hotel’s environmental-friendliness.

I&D: As I see… there has been a enormous rise in the popularity. Any specific celebrity story you would like us to know?
IQBAL LATIF: Yes, Rafayel generated a lot of interest and has gained a reputation for being the “in” place.  Other than political, literary and entertainment celebrities of my personal acquaintance, the hotel became the perfect venue for visiting stars pre-World Cup tournament, during Wimbledon Tennis, and other filming events.  Recently, we were very proud to host Shahrukh Khan who was in London during Ra.One shooting, and in fact the wrap-up part was held at our Nirvana Lounge which was a great success.  Mr. Khan is a very intelligent good-natured person and I admired his down-to-earth attitude.  We talked extensively and exchanged ideas which he found intriguing and probably the reason why we went beyond normal acquaintance to friendship.  We sincerely wish him all the success in his upcoming film.

I&D: What new cutting edge implementations are being brought about that is environmental friendly?
IQBAL LATIF: What is carbon footprint? Wastage. What you consume and waste becomes your carbon footprint, which you can control. And that is what we have – control of our wastage.  

Rafayel has embraced cutting-edge green technologies that would reduce its carbon footprint by 20% as opposed to hotel rooms in London that average an alarming 70kg.  Luckily, we were in the phase during which Phillips came out with this innovative and beautiful technology that we are now working with, the LED. This hotel is 98.2% LED. We have 7.5 % fluorescent volume per bulb instead of 41%, and this is half of what a candle burns with 16 watt.  The concept was based around achieving the desired aesthetics and ambience with very low energy consumption; this was done through the use of the latest generation LED technology by Philips. The LED lighting within the Hotel will bring up to 80% of energy saving compared to the conventional low-wattage halogen. So basically we’ve gone back to Cave Ages in terms of lighting, but have illuminated the hotel beautifully. There are 107,000 rooms in London and if everybody works on this concept, we may be able to close down two fuel fire plants! 2,000-megawatt of electricity can be cut off.

We installed Daikin air-conditioning system with heat recovery to obtain the desired optimum energy use. VRVIII H/R systems allow excess heat generated in one part of the building to be transferred to other parts of the building where heat is needed. VRVIII H/R has the best energy efficiency ratings in the industry, while maintaining the highest levels of comfort due to the possibility of continuous heating during defrost cycles, quick changeover between heating and cooling modes, and the ability to provide optimum climate control per chosen building zone.

Our Coleman Moducel ventilation system units incorporate heat exchangers (recuperators) which run with up to 70% heat recovery efficiencies where heat recovery will occur in both heating and cooling modes, dependent upon the temperatures of fresh and return air being supplied and extracted from the spaces within the Hotel. This combined with intelligent controls ensure that energy recovery is optimised under all ambient conditions.
Even our “Hypnos” beds are eco-friendly and of “royal” quality.   “Hypnos” provides a revolutionary bed disposal and recycling service that exceeds environmental objectives, providing a zero landfill and a zero carbon footprint process. Machinery at Hypnos’s certified ‘waste management’ facility shreds and separates materials. The recycled raw materials are used within a range of alternative manufacturing processes – nothing is wasted and nothing ends up in landfill: metal hinges and springs are recycled back into steel products; timber into MDF or wood shavings; foam reused in carpet underlay; textiles recycled into insulation products or briquettes for industrial heating – even the packaging materials from new beds are also recycled.

In any hotel, the air conditioning and heating may account for 70% of the energy usage in a guest bedroom, but by using the VDA Micromaster solution it allows total management and control of maximum and minimum room temperatures. This not only massively reduces energy costs, it also helps extend the life of the plant systems in the hotel, and helps reduce our maintenance costs with them being utilised in a more controlled way. It also substantially reduces the property’s carbon footprint.
 The Micromaster solution allows the hotel to control areas such as energy, housekeeping, security etc. but not only that, the guest interface has now become an attractive design feature, with touch sensitive glass control units that work just like an IPOD, becoming activated when a guest moves close to them. 

One of the biggest things we have created in our own hotel is the management of our own resources and we keenly follow it. Like rainwater harvesting. We collect rainwater whenever it rains and we use it for cultivation for all the green you see around the hotel.  In the bathrooms, we took the bath away and placed power-showers instead. Why? Because in a regular bath you lose about 70 – 120 gallons of water. With a power-shower you can finish with 15 to 20 gallons or 10 to 15 gallons. A three minute shower with 10 gallons can give you a soothing feeling which in our opinion was a good balance.

Our doors that look totally mahogany are actually plinths of mahogany. So normally a room would be created by using seven trees. We have created seven rooms with maybe less than half a tree; the timber we used comes from a German factory. All these beautiful doors look like real wood but inside they are synthetic.

For our bathroom products, we went to NEOM and ended up with a beautiful selection of organic products with no plastics. It saves nearly 5000 bottles of plastic.  My major decision was a “no plastic” and “paperless” policy. So we stopped all these magazines and newspapers and instead have electronic newspapers; if you want to read them you can on the internet, which is free.

We’ve also saved both cost and energy savings accumulated from installing the Vivreau bottling system. 
Based on an average weight of a glass bottle and the average consumption Rafayel is eliminating 500,000 kg of delivered bottled water over 5 years, which is a huge amount. It will also be eliminating 205,000 kg of glass bottled waste for disposal.  So what we have are refilled bottles of water offered free of charge, still or sparkling, and we serve it without being asked so that saves any customer ten pounds.   

I believe we are making a real change with no gimmicks.  The adage “Waste not want not” has never held truer – quite unique when you see that it comes without being parsimonious about quality.

I&D: What is the best compliment and the worst complaint ever?
IQBAL LATIF: There are too many “bests” to choose from, but being called a “hidden gem” and being acknowledged by connoisseurs as “the most outstanding and memorable experience” is a source of great pride to us.  Within 9 months of opening, we rank among the top ten business hotels in London and I can only accord it to guest appreciation for our quality and services, which has helped us gain this remarkable achievement in a relatively short span of time.   I can’t really say that many complaints have been the “worst” because that is part and parcel of the business.  Even the complaints we have had are a compliment in disguise because they have nothing to do with the quality of our rooms or amenities or design.  We have had some about the off-incident where a guest was unhappy with our staff.  But we take each grievance very seriously and go to great lengths to make amends which leaves our customers very happy and satisfied.

I&D: I have read the traveler reviews about “Rafayel on the Left Bank” they are superb?
IQBAL LATIF: I attribute it to our team who are very dedicated and try to do their best.

I&D: How does a traveler make booking requests to the hotel? Are there any special packages?
IQBAL LATIF: Apart from being listed on various booking sites, reservations can be made on our website which is very user-friendly.  As I mentioned earlier, we update our site with new packages regularly which are packed with splendid discount offers on the room, restaurant and spa treatments.  

I&D: As a philanthropist…how do you see today’s world?
IQBAL LATIF: We are living in the most peaceful era of human history.   The last century was fraught with wars and went through its own evolutionary period and we realized that nothing is better than peace.   But what history has taught me is that progress in life is about construction, creative productive ideas, and love of mankind, and not about religious ideologies or medieval practices, wars and disasters.  Modern world has no room for disagreements and hatred.  Our genetic model is based on that.  Mankind is a great big orchestra where each man is a conductor playing the symphony of love.  It is scripted within all of us.  

Those who seek destruction are merely peripheral and become footnotes in the annals.  It is also not just the survival of the fittest, but of the fastest who have a constructive attitude and are most responsive to changing times.  Medieval cultures and nations fighting for supremacy through swords and reigns of terror are failures.  Riparian societies were subjected to all kinds of terror, like the Mongol invasions for example.  But that balance of terror does not exist anymore.  And we have got to play our roles in a very unique, creative and magnanimous manner without narrow-minded biases and intolerance so that we leave a proud legacy for our future generations.  The onus lies on us to train our children to be great human beings, eradicate caste or creed; no religion is big enough or creative enough to encompass the demands of 6 billion people. 

I believe I have transcended into a new creed.  I think we all should follow one thought: that of unique ‘humankind’, we have the same inherited coding, the same love, the same hatreds.  We got to go beyond parochial ideological fixations and reach a universal solution where we identify ourselves as citizens of this big blue planet that we should all call “Mother Earth.”  Plain and simple, it helps me eradicate the ‘middleman’ (Prophet) who tells me through his “agents provocateurs’ (clergy) who to love and how to love others.  Love is born within us; we don’t need an agent provocateur to tell me.  Everyone’s way is so different and complex.  But we humans can have only one way “the human way” and love should be our main objective.  We need to go beyond our self-made delusions and avatars. 

Mankind today is at another cusp of evolution where we have come a long long way from Stone Age to the Age of Connectivity, where the world has become one giant neighbourhood; a new melting pot has emerged where 4 to 5 generations from now will have a new civil and human order without boundaries where caste and creed will be a thing of the past.  We are the last remnants of the “Old World”.  Until the ‘50s we were not this connected or mastered electronics the way we have now, and 100 years from now we probably will be considered “medieval,” or have our era referred to as the second “Industrial Revolution.”  Today, death of distance has made available a deluge of information and knowledge making possibilities endless; of feeling the pains of tragedies and disasters in real time from Western Samoa to Helsinki, to Bombay to Sydney in nano seconds (Our great great grandfathers would know months later that the barbarians had invaded).  We are living in an unbelievably huge institution of knowledge where the capacity of our mind is increasing, where boundaries have become opaque, and the only way forward is to change, be more flexible in ideas, tap into the love that is in our genetic coding, be “human” and live in peace, and understand that we are a connected world, otherwise we will be discarded and relegated to a footnote or cast among the unmentionables. 

On the lighter side, I don’t see myself as a philanthropist, but more of a “hedonistic” humanist. J One of life’s enjoyers determined to get the most I can out of my brief spell on this glorious planet.  This is perhaps what first attracted me to atheism – the prospect of liberation from the Ten Commandments, few of which are compatible with life’s pleasures.  I play hard and work quite hard, have a strong sense of loyalty and a relaxed but consistent approach to my philosophy.  I can’t see the point of abstract principles and probably wouldn’t lay down my life for a concept, though I might for a friend.   Something of a champagne humanist, I admire George Bernard Shaw for his cheerful agnosticism and pursuit of sensual rewards, and my Hollywood hero is Marlon Brando, who was beautiful (for a while), irascible and aimed for goodness in his own tortured way. I adored the humanist London bus slogan (“There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life”) and am delighted that wild young comedians like Stewart Lee, Christina Martin and Ricky Gervais share my full-blooded rejection of religion. Sometimes I might be tempted to allow my own pleasures to take precedence over my ethics. But everyone is striving for that elusive balance between the good and the happy life.  I would probably open another bottle and agree that for me: there’s no contest!

My life is dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and education. Like Isaac Newton, I see myself “like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”  I think creativity and creative ideas are a direct product of my passion for knowledge and my fascination with man and mankind.  My greatest political strength is my endless ability for rapport with ordinary people…and to be fascinated by even the most unfascinating people, because of my inordinate interest and curiosity, and because I am always willing to learn from them.  I believe the key to any success I may have achieved in life comes from placing blind trust and faith in people.  Perhaps my biggest disappointments have come when they abused this trust, but at the end of the day, you always win if you maintain it and abide by your principles.  This is part of Rafayel’s success story.