Then Dubai started to segment the hotels —, urban, business, airport, resort — then Sheikh Zayed Road started to develop with the Crowne Plaza opening. But could we predict the boom of 2006/07/08? Certainly we were not predicting it would grow that fast. That was beyond anybody’s expectation.
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Today the variety and quality of the hotels we have is next to none really, and I have a very critical eye and I’m a very critical person, visiting hotels all over the world. I’m happy to see that we have started to develop hotels here, we used to go across to Singapore, Hong Kong, London, Paris, New York and look at the hotel trends – today I can comfortably tell you that people come here to do that.
But certainly over the next few years you will see a tougher competition, so if you want to compete you need to differentiate your product, but I hope we will not go crazy and build something that isn’t viable, isn’t sustainable, or doesn’t make money. What the UAE will come up with is more innovative hotels, further breaking the mould of the hotel, the style, the quality — maybe we will create some of our own segments? Who says the hotel has to be built the way we are building it?
The segments will be widened; you will see a family hotel purely for families, sharia-compliant hotels, a hotel which is highly segmented to conferences and conventions.
I hope that we get more nationals into the hotels, and I’m talking for their careers, not just to be a driver, he has to be management level to contribute to the hotel, that I hope very much, my second hope is that we have more sustainable hotels.
DTCM and ADTA are both taking initiatives as we speak about Emiratisation programmes and they’re both very serious about this, subsequently this will have an impact on the northern emirates — sooner or later the authorities have to enourage more nationalisation project into hotels. That’s my wish, I hope they put some quota if it is well controlled. Putting a quota is maybe the only way we can expedite this. This has got some advantages and might have some disadvantages, but if it is managed well, I think it’s the right idea to do it.”