2012 focus
To meet the needs of this market, Grub says his focus is to offer value — to guests and owners.
“The priority is driving value,” he states. “There is still a great potential here in Dubai…we are still focusing on our corporate business, obviously, where it is appropriate. We are focusing on the higher end of the market. We are focusing on our yielding, how well do we yield against our competitors. We are looking at an increase of four-to-five percent turnover for 2012.”
But that’s not all — in 2012 many of Starwood’s upcoming hotel openings and planned renovation projects will be refreshed and Grub is keen to kickstart these.
| Advertisement |
“And our focus is to begin opening our new hotels,” he continues. “[These include] the Sheraton Sheikh Zayed Road, which is right next to The Monarch; we are driving our new builds in Sharjah, which include a 360-room beach-front property with the Sheraton brand in Sharjah, a Four Points property opposite the blue souk and a Luxury Collection hotel just across the boarder of Sharjah into Ajman.”
The hotels are not due to open until 2013, but Grub explains 2012 will be vital in developing the marketing and operational set up.
In addition, Grub reveals: “We have four or five properties in the pipeline where we haven’t signed management contracts yet but we have letters of intents out, so we will have a very busy 2012”.
There are also significant refurbishments underway at existing properties, which Grub says form a critical part of the business strategy.
“We as hotel operators advise the owners when to renovate, because we are the market drivers. We know when to renovate, because if you don’t renovate, you get stagnant. And stagnancy means you pull back. Not renovating in today’s market environment means losing out.
“We have renovations going on for instance at the Sheraton Dubai Creek, we are renovating half the hotel, plus some food and beverage outlets. At Sheraton Jumeirah we are renovating some food and beverage outlets, as well as rooms. The Le Méridien at the airport is building additional rooms and renovating the function space,” Grub reveals.
F&B upgrades are important because of the contribution the department makes in terms of revenue, continues Grub.
“I can tell you food and beverage is a very, very big part of our business. On average, you can say about 45% of our business comes out of food and beverage from our total turnover. In some hotels, we do more F&B revenues than we do room revenue even running 90% occupancies.
“That is different to most markets — but don’t forget hotels are still social and civic centres in this part of the world. Here in Dubai, if a hotel doesn’t have four or five outlets, it is not a five-star hotel,” he says.
Article continues on next page ...
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
