Grand Hyatt Dubai area director John Beveridge Grand Hyatt Dubai area director John Beveridge

Beveridge has come full circle, having worked at Hyatt Regency in 1982 then travelling the world with Hyatt before returning to Dubai in 2008 as GM of the Regency. He took up his current role on August 1, 2010. We asked him what he remembers from his first experiences in the UAE…and how he feels about the industry here now...

“I came to Dubai at the beginning of 1981 and joined the Chicago Beach Hotel as a sous chef, on the site of what is now the Jumeirah Beach Hotel.

At that time, Chicago Beach was about the only thing at that end of Jumeirah and there was Chicago Village as well, slightly further along the road past the jetty which was a complex of bungalows on the beach, where some expats stayed. And if one wanted to do something on your day off you’d head into Karama or somewhere into Bur Dubai because there was nothing in the other direction until Abu Dhabi.

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For an evening out we would go to the Metropolitan Hotel to the discotheque and there was a guy there called Seleh who was the club manager and he had two big Alsatian dogs, which would come into the club when the lights went on at three in the morning.

There were very few hotels at that time; there was The International at the Airport which was a Trust House Forte Hotel, now Le Meridien Dubai, there was the InterContinental which is now the Radisson Blu on the Creekside, and there was the Sheraton Creekside — everything was Creekside at that time — and there was of course the Hyatt Regency in Deira.

During that first period I was here in Dubai, in 1981, the Hatta Fort Hotel opened and the Jebel Ali Hotel opened and I remember going down to Jebel Ali hotel shortly after it opened and they had a brunch on and you were wondering who would drive all the way down there in the middle of nowhere. But one can see today the vision they had building these hotels at that time.

Sheikh Zayed Road was a dual carriageway at that time and the Trade Centre was there next to the Hilton hotel — they hosted a band which sang a song called ‘Life in the Emirates’. I haven’t heard the song for years — it was a couple of expat guys who sang in the bar there at the Hilton and it was almost like the theme tune at that time for anyone living in Dubai.

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