Le Meridien Dubai is transforming its ballroom in order to offer guests a new style of live cooking and banqueting entertainment.
The hotel, owned by the Dubai government and operated by Starwood, is increasing the capacity of the ballroom to 1500 seated, which will make it one of the biggest in Dubai.
As part of the expansion, the ballroom will feature a full kitchen, located behind a moveable screen.
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Le Meridien Dubai general manager Ranjan Nadarajah told Caterer Middle East: “It’s going to be slightly different because the ballroom will be more like a theatre — we are bringing the kitchen into the ballroom, so there will be live cooking that can go on while the function is on and you can close it or open it as you like.
“This is something that nobody knows yet, you press a button, a screen goes up and you see the kitchen, you press a button it comes down,” he revealed.
“I’ve seen it a bit in Las Vegas, that’s one of the reasons we decided to do it that way but we’re doing it on a smaller scale. We hope that that will be a unique selling point that we have because today the business is so sophisticated in Dubai.”
Nadarajah said the ballroom development was part of an upgrade and expansion at Le Meridien that would in two years see it “be one of the nicest properties again in the town.”
Innovations such as this are the key to remaining competitive, he said.
“Twenty years ago we always said ‘let’s go to Hong Kong, let’s go to Singapore, let’s go to Las Vegas’, to see the latest things in the hotel business, but today because Dubai has got so advanced people come here to see what goes on. There’s such a lot of great restaurants and great hotels here that people come out here to see that and most probably go and copy it,” said Nadarajah.
“This is why you have to always do things now in a way that it does wow the customer.
When you land here your expectation is much, much higher than when you land in other parts of the world because people come here thinking that everything is going to be so perfect and this is why one has to service a very high expectation. It is not easy”.
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