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THE EXECUTIVE LIFE
DINING OUT	BUSINESS TRAVELER	TOP PICKS

AN OFFICE AWAY FROM THE OFFICE

By Matthew Carrington

For hotels, a lot of elements go into creating a good working environment for business travelers. Some are easily defined: working phones, Internet-ready computers stocked with business applications, and well-lit meeting rooms that don’t smell of someone else’s cigars. Others are harder to pin down. Like atmosphere. Providing a comfortable yet productive atmosphere is a whole different ballgame from keeping tourists happy, and business travelers have a whole list of personal whims that hotel staff must seamlessly adapt to, without them ever noticing it’s even happening.

The imperative to satisfy these elements, however, is clear.

Business travelers, says Han De Wint, deputy general manager of the Sheraton Heliopolis, are “very important... more than half our business is business-related in some way.”

For the business traveler, the Sheraton Heliopolis is ideally located or hopelessly isolated, depending on your perspective. Just minutes from the Terminal 2 luggage belt to the spacious, well-lit lobby, it could nonetheless take your driver an hour or more to get you to a Downtown meeting in the afternoon.

The hotel’s business center is small but well enough equipped, with a color printer, photocopier and two fax machines. Open between 8am and 10pm, it can provide temporary secretaries, as well as rental laptops and phones. While not particularly welcoming, it does have a saving grace for creative types on the move – it is the only business center that Business Monthly knows of to boast an Apple computer.
This may mean little in these days of easy plug-in compatibility, but for anyone with an older model, or simply looking for a friendly face in a world still enamored with the PC, a big old G4 tower can be a welcome sight indeed.

The Sheraton Heliopolis’ meeting rooms, across the hall from the business center, have natural light and are neatly appointed, enjoying fresher decor than the business center itself. WiFi is available throughout the hotel and pool area for a fairly standard £E 160/day.

Upstairs, in the Tower Lounge, the Sheraton offers a few more workstations and another private meeting room. At least as important, they also offer a relaxed, pleasant environment for informal get-togethers and reading newspapers over a cup of coffee. While the decor could use a makeover, the Economist and Paris Match were available on the magazine rack.

There is another hotel with the work-by-the-pool setting located near the airport – the J.W. Marriott. Like the Sheraton Heliopolis, anyone doing business Downtown is going to find the location, out on the ring road in Mirage City, a little inconvenient, but it does offer a secure venue for the type of high-profile guests that everyone wants to meet, such as Microsoft chief Bill Gates.

That said, the J.W. Marriott has all the usual facilities, from broadband Internet (though not necessarily wireless) connectivity in all guest rooms to faxes and printers in its business center. While an informal survey of past customers came up with general satisfaction with their 12 meeting rooms, listing standard features such as voicemail as “business amenities” is a bit of a stretch. When all is said and done, however, what other business hotel in Cairo has its own golf course?

The most explicitly business-oriented of Cairo’s hotels is the Conrad Cairo, located directly on the Nile close to Downtown. General manager Jan Monkedieck emphasizes the importance of business travelers and points up the range of facilities his hotel has on offer saying: “Business travelers are an integral part of our clientele. The Conrad’s facilities of guest rooms, business center, banquet and convention facilites, as much as the leisure facilities, are geared to accommodate [them].”

The Conrad, which tries always to be a step ahead of the competition, claims to have been the first hotel in Cairo to install wireless Internet access. For the truly high flier, there’s even a rooftop helipad. While it is still impossible to chopper in for the board meeting because of outmoded civil aviation regulations, we can hope that this will soon change.

On a more mundane level, the Conrad’s crisp decor, combined with unbeatable Nile views from its meeting rooms, gives this place an immediate edge over much of the competition. The view from its 26th-floor business lounge juxtaposes the sparkling Nile and gritty urban sprawl, but with the FT and the Times to distract you, and a very decent looking breakfast buffet to boot, life is probably bearable.

The business center offers a pretty standard range of faxing, printing, translating and so on services, but is set apart from the rest by an office-like hum. The place just feels like an office and has an atmosphere that says that work is getting done.

Across the river in Zamalek, the popular Cairo Marriott offers something very different indeed. Where the Conrad feels like it’s ticking along according to a well thought out plan, the Marriott embraces its guests with a particularly Cairene sense of ad hoc friendliness. It starts as soon as you walk through the sumptuous front doors of this 19th century palace into the low-ceilinged lobby. No vast, glistening expanses of marble and “coffee shops” big enough for trade shows. This is a hotel for those who like to keep their friends close, and their fellow guests closer.

What the Marriott does have to offer is seriously impressive meeting rooms. Replete with glorious gold and blue upholstered furniture, the meeting rooms are resplendent with massive mirrors and chandeliers that hark back to the building’s romantic past. Ranging in size from intimate to massive, these are just the ticket if you need to make a serious, unforgettable impression on a group of guests. One caution: the dank smell of 24-hour smoking that emerges from the casino has snuck into some of these rooms – send someone over for a sniff in the rooms you plan to use before making a firm booking.

The downside of the Marriott for a busy executive will be the business center, which seems to have devolved into a £E 60 per hour Internet café for tourists unaware that they can get wireless access for free at dozens of nearby cafés. That said, the hotel’s lush garden, with the commodious and tremendously popular Terrace restaurant, is almost reason enough to use this place as your temporary HQ. Combine this with a central location, friendly and competent staff, and you could do a whole lot worse than the Marriott.

While the Four Seasons in Garden City does not tout itself as a business hotel, it boasts facilities at least the equal of its competitors who do.

The Four Seasons business center is spacious and well lit. Where the Conrad’s hums with that purposive, “business being done here” atmosphere, the Four Seasons is more relaxed and introspective, with a decor to match. With a layout that leaves other centers seeming in retrospect cramped, as well as meeting rooms with gorgeous, direct views of the Nile, the risk here is of finding it all too relaxing.

While the hotel has no executive lounge per se, the comfortable atmosphere of the business center – which has ample seating, restaurant service and Time and Newsweek on the rack – makes one wonder whether it would be missed.

Prices for individual services such as mobile phone rental, Internet and so on are marginally higher than other centers, but let’s face it: this is not a budget hotel. If your expense account is generous enough to handle the rack rate, nobody’s going to raise an eyebrow at an extra few pounds for stationery supplies or your Internet access.

Beyond the business center, the Four Seasons has little to offer the business traveler that is not available to all their guests, “because we already treat all our guests as special,” says Hibba Bilal, the hotel’s public relations manager.

It doesn’t take long in the Four Seasons to come to the conclusion that this is more than simply PR talk.
Just a stone’s throw from the Four Seasons, on the leafy northern tip of Roda Island, the Grand Hyatt towers over its surroundings. Topped by a disc-shaped revolving restaurant that offers good food and unparalleled views for your deal-brokering dinner, it also features one of the city’s most pleasant Nile-side patios.

In contrast to its capacious lobby, however, the Hyatt’s business center is small. Located two floors above reception in the banquet section, it has a tacked-on feel, as though it was squeezed into an available space as an afterthought. It is pleasantly enough appointed, though, with four work stations and a meeting room for six. But with cramped spaces and no natural light, it is hardly a place to get much done.

Where the Hyatt shines, in Business Monthly’s experience, is the staff, who have somehow mastered the difficult art of being casually, efficiently and pleasantly attentive. This is the place for you if your idea of a business facility is a first-class food and drinks spot, with staff who will ease you and your guests stresslessly through the afternoon.

Ultimately the choice of which hotel you use while doing business in Cairo is going to come down to a combination of location appropriate to your needs and individual style. Each of the hotels that Business Monthly looked at has a lot going for it. They all have highly professional staff and excellent restaurants, and business centers that can turn out your presentation, keep you in touch with home and help you replace equipment lost in transit. Where they differ is in how they put the complete package together, and how closely they can tailor it to your whims and foibles. And that’s where you just have to go and try them for yourself.

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