Kempinski delays Palm hotel in Dubai by two years

Luxury hotel operator Kempinski AG is delaying a hotel project on Palm Jumeirah in Dubai by two years, its president for the Middle East and Africa said.

A 253-room development on Dubai’s palm tree-shaped artificial island will remain a “shell” for the time being, with the opening pushed back until 2013, Ulrich Eckhardt told Bloomberg.

“I’m concerned about what I consider poor planning from those in a position to approve new hotels,” Eckhardt said in an interview in Dubai.

Building permission was granted without studying “existing inventory, growth rates and future demand,” he said.

“As we open these hotels, we have to create a customer base,” Eckhardt told Bloomberg. “We knew it was impossible to create that with all these other hotels opening at the same time. You would be diverting business, not creating it.”

Kempinski, which manages 15 hotels in the Middle East and Africa, will open 82 luxury serviced apartments and 10 villas on Palm Jumeirah in June.

It plans to open nine properties in the next three years in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.

No-one at Kempinski was available to speak with HotelierMiddleEast.com at the time of writing.