QUEST

"Persistance is omnipotent" - Stephen Mansfield, Managing Director, Quest Group

Stephen Mansfield believes that persistence has been the corner stone of Quest success and also the basis for establishing the relationship between itself and Arrow International.

Established in 1989, Quest is Australasia’s largest and fastest growing serviced apartment group, with over 95 complexes in all key locations from Perth to Auckland and Darwin to Invercargill.

Stephen Mansfield, who has now been involved with serviced apartments in one way or another since 1983, was the Managing Director in Australia and has since relocated to New Zealand to facilitate the growth of the Quest brand in 1998.

Since then, Quest now has over 21 operations, with a further 4 coming on line over the next 2 years.

Stephen has confirmed that one of the major challenges for his group was to ensure an understanding the difference between the property and business fundamentals within a serviced apartment operation by various key stakeholders.

"We have made our share of mistakes and had our challenges in growing our business into the New Zealand market, but thankfully, with the support of many, we have now firmly established the Quest Serviced Apartment Group as the dominant serviced apartment group in New Zealand."

"Steven Van Der Pol from Arrow International, first made contact with (Stephen Mansfield) about 4 years ago, and left umpteen messages on my mobile" he states, "at that stage we were not in a position to dialogue sensibly with his organisation, but thanks to his persistence, Arrow International and Quest have spent a lot of time understanding each others business approach and objectives and have found a lot of synergies, including core values. Steven confirms (these values) are vitally important when working through the difficult issues."

This relationship has produced an initial outcome, through the development and launch of the Quest Invercargill in Invercargill and Quest Dunedin with Quest Napier currently in construction and Quest Hastings in planning stage.