Head to head: business versus leisure

At the launch of Ibn Battuta Gate’s whopping AED 6 million (US $1.6 million) ‘Unlock the Gate’ promotion last month, which is designed to draw guests to the new hotel with a series of fun offers, discounts and rewards, the managing director of Seven Tides, Mike Scully, raised an interesting point.

According to Scully, it’s time hoteliers in Dubai were offered incentives by the tourism board “to concentrate on their own segment”. He believes that the tendency of resort properties to take business clientele has two negative results: it takes business away from corporate properties and prevents genuine holiday makers from finding an available room in one of the city’s established beach resorts.

“Dubai is losing millions and millions a year in room rates because the different market segments are encroaching on each other’s business,” asserts Scully.

“It’s all very well resort hotels sitting there at Easter and Christmas and half term being full and then the rest of the year taking a huge number of guests that should be going to corporate hotels, but there are willing international tourists who want to go to the beach, not being able to get a room because they are overpriced and above yield.”

The solution, he asserts, would be for the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing to incentivise hotels to focus on their own sector.

“This is a strategy which has to be taken on if we really want to drive tourism and drive numbers. It’s more of a strategic approach,” believes Scully, adding that with so many more rooms coming onto the market, this will be one way of helping to fill them.

It is a point I’m sure many business hotel operators would agree with, but Dubai has always prided itself on a policy of non-regulation — hotels can charge whatever they can get, for example.

It seems unlikely the tourism board would head in this direction — it has already, as an example of this, said it would not offer incentives to hotels who are striving to ‘go green’, so why should this be any different?

Plus, one of the main goals of the tourism board is to increase length of stay. And one way to do this is to encourage business travellers to opt for more leisure-oriented properties so that they are eager to add a day’s holiday onto their trip or bring their family along for a proper break once business is done.

Why shouldn’t the stressed out exec be able to chill out on the beach a matter of metres from his room? Isn’t that the beauty of Dubai; the buzz of business and leisure blending with each other?

I wonder what Scully’s thoughts are of the new Jumeirah Zabeel Saray on The Palm, Jumeirah. On page 30, general manager Stephan Schupbach says that the response from groups and corporates has been much higher than expected.

This is a resort property through and through, but if groups or companies want to conduct their business somewhere a little different, why shouldn’t that be encouraged?

It’s a conundrum that no doubt affects other destinations in our region: send your thoughts to louise.oakley@itp.com.