Range Hospitality chief executive officer Munaf Ali and Shaza Hotels president and CEO Simon Coombs have come together to develop five-star hotels in
Range Hospitality chief executive officer Munaf Ali and Shaza Hotels president and CEO Simon Coombs tell Louise Oakley how they will meet the needs of religious tourists in Iraq and Iran.
Over recent months, the market has witnessed the entrance of two new companies: Range Hospitality, a specialist developer of hotels in areas of high religious tourism and Shaza Hotels, a new hotel operator inspired by Middle Eastern culture and focused on niche markets.
On December 5, 2010, the men behind these two exciting new firms revealed in an exclusive interview with Hotelier Middle East that they had come together in order to develop and manage contemporary, five-star hotels in Iraq and Iran, with yet more expected to follow in countries across the Middle East and North Africa.
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Range Hospitality chief executive officer Munaf Ali and Shaza Hotels president and CEO Simon Coombs were refreshingly frank when we met to discuss their news, keen to communicate the unique balance of their relationship and the special nature of their hotels.
That very day they signed the contract for Shaza Hotels to manage Range Hospitality’s Al Rawdatain Gardens hotel planned for Karbala, Iraq.
The 624-key hotel is the first modern hospitality development to be built in Karbala, which is one of the holiest cities in Shi’a Islam, after Mecca and Al Madinah in Saudi Arabia and Najaf in Iraq, and is visited by 18 million pilgrims each year.
“We decided to look at the gap in the market to see how we can benefit the pilgrims,” Ali explains. “We found there are no five-star hotels in Karbala. What is available are two-star hotels at five-star prices. You can pay US $200-300 per bed where five or six people share a room, that’s more expensive than Dubai, more expensive than Europe.”
The opportunity for a developer like Range was obvious, but only in partnership with a hotel operator capable of understanding these market dynamics and meeting Ali’s specific requirements.
“We’ve had a lot of interest from hotel operators from all over the world. We came across Simon and I think that we just sort of gelled because we are both 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,” adds Ali.
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