Christopher Cowdray has 23 years experience managing luxury hotels on four continents, 10 of those spent in London between Claridge’s and The Dorchester, where he was appointed general manager in June 2004. Now CEO of the Dorchester Collection, Cowdray aims to do for the collection what he’s done for the property—make it the sought-after place to be. But while perfecting each property, he’ll also look to grow the collection into one of the world’s foremost hotel management companies through both third-party management agreements and acquisitions of the world’s finest hotels.

HOTELS: Do you intend to grow the Dorchester Collection primarily via management contracts?

Cowdray: The intention is to take on management contracts, but where the right opportunity presents itself [to] invest into or purchase a hotel we will certainly do so. We hope to announce two projects quite shortly that will be ownership projects.

HOTELS: What markets are most desirable?

Cowdray: Our focus is going to be on North America and particularly the major cities—New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and, possibly, San Diego. In Europe, we’re well represented in Paris, London and Milan; we’d certainly be open to other major European cities which show future growth. It is not our intention to go into the Far East, South America or the Middle East. Once the company has developed to a reasonable size, we can then start to put resources into other areas. But it is not a priority at the moment and we are not considering resort hotels, either.

HOTELS: Are there any upcoming deals that you can discuss?

Cowdray: There are two in Europe and two in the States, so four total [coming] in the next few months.

HOTELS: In the past, you have brought chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, David Tang and, most recently, Alain Ducasse to your properties. Who’s next?

Cowdray: If you really want to be successful in hotels and hotel dining, it is important to have restaurants that will really appeal to the local community. In Paris both hotels have 3-star Michelin chefs and that is very significant as part of the branding of the hotels.

In November we opened Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester—that is appealing to not only hotel guests but is very much competing with the London market. Beyond that, we have no plans at the moment.

HOTELS: What are you doing across the collection or at individual properties to go green?

Cowdray: It is a key objective moving forward—two hotels we are developing will be Greenfield sites. We are looking to make sure all equipment put in is very eco-friendly—whether it is using biomass boilers [or] very efficient chillers. With existing hotels, as a plant comes up for replacement, we are looking at what is going to be the most efficient as far as the environment is concerned as well as cost. There are also more localized programs for energy conservation and recycling at all the hotels.

HOTELS: What new marketing plans do you have?

Cowdray: We will be embarking on a fairly significant awareness program that we hope to launch in the middle of the year, and the key markets for that will be the U.S. and also Europe.

HOTELS: What challenges do you face in 2008?

Cowdray: Growing a company like this—of fantastic hotels—is [itself] a very exciting challenge. The biggest challenge in the year ahead will be what happens with the U.S. economy. But I’m optimistic about that—at this stage I’m not overly concerned. America is a particularly important market to us, but most of our hotels are very cosmopolitan as far as market mix, so we will continue to rely on other markets around the world.

HOTELS: What other collections, companies or brands do you consider competition? How does the Dorchester Collection differ from the competition?

Cowdray: We look at corporations such as Four Seasons and Mandarin Oriental as being our competition. The very big difference between those hotels and the Dorchester Collection is that our hotels are all a style of individuality. Our hotels in their own right have very strong brands. How do we retain that brand or image and at the same time bring it under a banner so that guests know [the hotels are] part of one company? For hotels that we are looking at to take on, we’ll try to see whether they are trophy hotels, hotels with a heritage or fairly individual in style. It is not always going to be easy, but it will be one of the main criteria for our acquisition program. Of course, that will slow growth.