After 20 year in the hotel industry, Guy Hutchinson, now chief operating officer at Rotana joined the firm in January leaving behind him multinational hotel chain Hilton Worldwide.

Hutchinson spoke exclusively with 4Hoteliers.com about his motivations in making the move and what values he sees in the company as it takes a leap forward targeting "aggressive" growth to 100 hotels by 2020.

You made the move recently to Rotana, what made you want to change firms?

I am 20 years in the business and the last 16 I spent with one of the large multinationals. There were 4,000 hotels all around the world and what you felt is that they are good companies, extremely successful, but when I got into this business, it was because I wanted to be in hospitality.

I am a hotelier and the multinationals are no longer hotel companies, they are real estate companies and the values system is very different, particularly when you move into management or corporate roles.

Rotana is a hotel company with a value system that is very specific and customer focused. It is a set of values that appeals to me, and now two months in my expectations have been met. It is a hotel company and that's why I get up in the morning and what I look forward to when I come to work.

What are the values that Rotana has?

If you go on the website you can follow the ethos behind it and see very clearly what the values are.

It's about the experience the customer has in a hotel and how, not just the hotel teams, but also the corporate function are engaged in that experience for the customer.

What challenges do you see moving forward?

None, it's going to be easy. It is a fascinating time for Rotana. If you look at how the company was in 1992 to where it is today, the growth is phenomenal from one property to 100 hotels by 2020.

Rotana is on the cusp of going from a very UAE-based company to having an international footprint. It is taking opportunities in other parts of the world and in three to five years it will be a completely different organization.

Customers are becoming more and more concerned about sustainability. What is Rotana doing to ensure it has a sustainable business model?

If you go to rotanaearth.com you will see the Rotana sustainability report. It is very focused on sustainable business practices and that is not just the lip service you get in this place. We don't just change the sheets every two days, there are human resource practices, which is a part of social responsibility.

You see community, you see environmental, you see human resource practices, everything we do in the business is on a sustainable basis; it's a core value.

How does it work from the negotiation over a hotel to opening it as a Rotana managed hotel?

Once you have signed for the hotel, you have the technical services engagement and then it's all disciplines from the front office to going through the plan for how many restaurants there will be, how many guest rooms, elevators. We work quite closely with the developers throughout the process to make sure that the hotel from the planning stage is the one that is going to open.

How do the hotels become part of the group, do you choose or do they apply?

It's a combination. In the market where we are traditionally strong, we are generally at the top of the list if somebody has got a project, but for the international regions we are looking to be more at the forefront. We have to be more aggressive in some regions.

It is a very exciting time to be part of this company. If we sat here in two years and did this interview again, hopefully we'd be in Hong Kong by then and the conversation would be fundamentally different. It's not just because of new people, but also the growth that is still driving the company and moving it forward.

This is strictly an exclusive feature, reprints of this article in any shape or form without prior written approval from 4Hoteliers.com is not permitted.

Louise Osborne is a correspondent and editor based in Berlin, Germany. She began her career working at regional newspapers in the UK and now works with journalists across the globe as part of international journalism organization, Associated Reporters Abroad (ARA). Living abroad for the second time, she continues to be fascinated by places both near and far, and boards a plane eagerly, as often as she can.

Besides the ITB Berlin 2014 live coverage, Louise also writes a weekly exclusive column for 4Hoteliers.com