EXCLUSIVE: Shaza reports pipeline of 11 hotels

Shaza Hotels, the five-star hotel operator supported by Kempinski and Guidance Hotel Investment Company, has 11 hotels under construction or in the design phase.

VP operations Sanjiv Malhotra told Hotelier Middle East that hotels in “Fez, Marrakech, Istanbul, Salalah, Dakar, Cairo, Jeddah and Doha” were in the active pipeline.

Construction on hotels in Sarajevo and Karbala, Iraq, is underway, with openings expected in 2013.

“Sarajevo was topped off as a building, and I think will open June 1, 2013, Karbala will open Octover 1, 2013,” said Malhotra.

He added that there was also a property planned for Bahrain, “which although completely designed and ready has not begun the implementation yet owing to the political situation there”.

The Shaza brand, which launched in 2011 with the opening of Shaza Al Madinah, is inspired by the cultural roots of the Middle Eastern region.

Malhotra explained: “We do believe our biggest theme is that we are a contemporary Eastern brand built on the aspiring values of its culture. And if you want to be authentic to it you must carry its values out in full.

“There are people who want to take a peek into a culture and I have great admiration for example with Mandarin Oriental, it presents beautifully the culture of the Chinese civilisation. So wherever they are in the world, whether New York or Geneva, or in The East, they are representing the culture of the Chinese civilisation. We want to present the civilisation of the East,” he asserted.

“In Arabic there is a word called Sharq, which is not a region, it’s not a Middle East and North Africa, it actually extends almost along the silk route from Morocco to Persia and that’s our footprint — these are the cultures we wish to represent,” said Malhotra.

He added that hotels may be built outside of this geographic zone, but that the Eastern culture would be represented in these locations.

For a full interview with Malhotra, see the April edition of Hotelier Middle East.