Artist's impression of The Royal Amwaj Resort on Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, which will offer an all-inclusive option.
What are your views on offering guests all-inclusive hotels and all-inclusive hotel packages?
Yigit Sezgin: Having hotels in Egypt as we do and being Turkish and having all-inclusive hotels in the Antalya region, I would say it’s a very dangerous issue.
Andrew Hughes: We’re going to have an all-inclusive option at Royal Amwaj. We believe it’s about guest choice. I think there’s absolutely room for the all-inclusive concept in Dubai and I think as long as you’re giving the customers choice and you’re positioning it as a premium product, not an exclusion-based product, [it will work].
So if a customer buys that experience, if they want to eat the lobster in the à la carte restaurant, they can eat the lobster. If they want three drinks at the pool at lunchtime, they can have three drinks sat by the swimming pool at lunchtime.
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Avsar Koc: I think the key word is the all-inclusive option. The days are long gone when you box people in on a single concept.
Beth Thomas: Some guests don’t want to move from the hotel when they go on holiday, other guests might want to do some exploring, other guests, because of business, will be out of the hotel. But it’s got to be guest choice.
Andrew Hughes: I think also it’s a misnomer that it’s not profitable; the maths can show you that an all-inclusive can be highly profitable if it’s managed the right way.
There are certain elements and patterns on consumption on peak days and low days and when people are out of the hotel [to consider] — so I think that once we do this, more resorts in the region will follow suit because we’ll be able to show the profitability.
I think it hasn’t happened here in Dubai because historically F&B has been such an important element in these resorts’ budget lines that the fear is that if we were to go all-inclusive we would lose all of these revenues out of our food and beverage.
It’s almost going to take a new hotel to come in to show the value and to see how effective it is and then others will follow suit.
Yigit Sezgin: I just want to say that I’m sorry, but I totally disagree. It’s a big virus, once you plug it in you can’t get it back. It’s a big danger.
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Apr 21, 2011 , United Kingdom
I think we need to stop comparing the Dubai all inclusive concept with hotels in destinations such as Egypt and Turkey. They are very different to aspirational Dubai and we should be looking at hotels in Mauritius or the Caribbean as a benchmark. Understandably, the tax and duty levels are diff...