Gerald Lawless, executive chairman of Jumeirah Group. Gerald Lawless, executive chairman of Jumeirah Group.

Dubai luxury hospitality group Jumeirah is looking to expand its portfolio in the United States, executive chairman Gerald Lawless has revealed.

With a total of nine new properties set to open this year, the Jumeirah Group is set to almost double its portfolio but Lawless has earmarked the US for further expansion.

The company already runs the Jumeirah Essex House near Central Park in New York but Lawless has targeted Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami and Washington as future locations for hotels.

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"We've always felt as well that we need to try to get some more locations within the United States," he said in an interview with Hotelnewsnow.com.

"We would take our key cities, not unsurprisingly, but if you go in a circle around Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Washington - these would be our key target areas to have representation.

"And in the next few years even if we got two or three of these locations, we would be very happy."

Lawless told Hotelelier Middle East at the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference that Jumeirah would be focusing on the  “stay different” luxury brand, and was "parting" with the developemnt of it's Venu brand, launched the year before. 

“We are Jumeirah and we will be Jumeirah for the future. We might look at it [Venu] again in a year or two to see whether or not there is a possibility to do something with the Venu brand, but right now for the immediate future we would not,” said Lawless.

Under the Jumeirah brand, the company has announced that it expects a total pipeline of 60 hotels within the next two years.

Lawless said: “We estimate between management agreements signed, hotels under development and hotels in operation, we expect to be totally around 60 [hotels] by 2012.

“Actually in operation by 2012 - by the end of this year we should have about 16-19 hotels and then three or four more - so by the end of 2012, we should have about 22 hotels in operation. We will have a further 38 signed up,” confirmed Lawless.