Range Hospitality appoints Shaza to manage hotels

Range Hospitality has today signed a deal for Shaza Hotels to manage the Al Rawdatain Gardens hotel in Karbala, Iraq, HotelierMiddleEast.com can exclusively reveal.

The 624-key hotel will be the first modern development to be built in Karbala and will target the 18 million pilgrims that visit the city each year.

Speaking to HotelierMiddleEast.com in Dubai immediately after the signing, Range Hospitality chief executive officer Munaf Ali said: “We decided to look at this gap in the market to see how we can benefit the pilgrims. We found there are no five-star hotels in Karbala at all. What are available are two-star hotels at five-star prices. You can end up paying US $200-300 per bed where five or six people share a room, that’s more expensive than Dubai, that’s more expensive than Europe.

“We’ve had a lot of interest in hotel operators from all over the world. We came across Simon [Coombs, president and CEO of Shaza Hotels] and I think we just sort of gelled because we are looking at a specific market; we are looking at religious tourism. It takes a particular type of a company to operate in these sorts of locations.

“Just because we want a five-star hotel doesn’t mean any five-star hotel operator will do: you need someone who is culturally aware of how to operate in an Islamic destination, a religious destination. When we started working with Simon and opened up the negotiations and discussions, we found that they are aware of what we are trying to do; we do not have to teach them how to operate a hotel in a destination like this. So I think things accelerated quite quickly. And we were able to sideline the other operators who weren’t up to speed,” added Ali.

Shaza Hotels president and CEO Simon Coombs, formerly executive vice president of Kempinski, commented: “With our very aligned views we were able to reach agreements fairly quickly. I think we were both very keen to conclude as soon as possible, basically because of the project dynamics as well. What I love about Range is they are very direct and very to the point and I hope that I am also. We are fairly straightforward in terms of our commercial interests”.

Funds for the development of Al Rawdatain Gardens have been fully secured and construction of the hotel will start in February 2011, with handover expected by July 2013.

Range Hospitality and Shaza are also working on a hotel development in Iran, which is scheduled to open by the end of 2011, Al told HotelierMiddleEast.com.

“Karbala is our flagship project which we started on first of all but our second project, which is in Mashhad in Iran, will be delivered next year,” said Ali.

“That’s a hotel very close to the shrines, same again — a lot of pilgrims visit this destination every year, there are no branded hotels, very high volumes and we’re there with Simon and Shaza and this one we should be opening in 2011.

“We purchased a hotel which is about 70% complete, which works again because interiors are the only thing that really need to be worked on. The actual shell and core of the hotel is there so now it’s just a case of designing the interiors, the layout, and this is about 200 rooms,” Ali explained.

“That’s a very good example of our involvement in the technical and the design side,” added Coombs. “Our team is very heavily involved in that now. By getting in at this stage now and reconfiguring the building and looking at the design, we again are very hopeful of being able to come up with a very unique and interesting hotel in another location.”

Range is also looking at developing hotels in Damascus, Syria and Mecca, Saudi Arabia, again with Shaza Hotels as the hotel operator, added Ali.

Shaza is a joint venture between Guidance Hotel Investment Company based in Paris and Kempinski Hotels S.A. based in Geneva.

The brand aims to have 25-30 hotels by 2016, up to 10 of which will be owned by the Shaza fund managed by Guidance Hotel Investment Company.

The first of these is the Shaza Hotel in Madinah, Saudi Arabia, which opened today [December 5].

For a full interview with Al Munaf and Simon Coombs, see the January issue of Hotelier Middle East.