A suite at the colourful Hotel Missoni Kuwait, which was the first from the brand to open in the Middle East. A suite at the colourful Hotel Missoni Kuwait, which was the first from the brand to open in the Middle East.

Governmental Issues
As much as some hotels are performing well in comparison, it is still the owners pushing forward with new builds, rather than operators. The main reason for this, say Hewett and Aboobacker, is that the government is doing little to ensure that any of its pre-crisis tourism masterplans are realised. However, this would be difficult under the circumstances – the country has had eight governments in the last six years.

“There’s a lot of distrust within the government, so as soon as someone puts a project on the table, people say that person is getting a backhander, so people are throwing out what they should approve,” Hewett says.

“The airport has been delayed three to four years just because of ongoing issues on the amount of money that’s being approved, and now that government has been disbanded again, political issues are the main concern that’s facing Kuwait as a financial centre as well as a tourism market.”

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“The plan which was communicated by the Kuwait government was to have around 20 million passenger traffic by 2016 and that is just around the corner, in the grand scheme of things,” explains Koth. In 2011, that figure stood at just under 8.5 million, with only a 2% rise year-on-year. “So, surely, there will be a certain push back on the realisation on those projects,” he adds.

Private Investment
With government confidence at a worrying low, and officials moving in and out of office at an alarming rate, can any new developments in the country be brought online without the governmental backbone seen in places such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi?

“You have the same municipalities and authorities, and once you have things approved, it should be uneventful to get a project up and running,” says Hewett.

Joe Sita, president of Kuwait-based IFA Hotel Investments, has a much more pessimistic view, however: “We are not currently seeing an increase in investment in the country; in fact, we are seeing the opposite, which is unfortunate. The trends show an increase in Kuwaiti money flowing into investments abroad instead of at home”.

Hewett agrees that while it would be possible to get projects off the ground, nothing is likely to happen without the government mega-projects, such as “multi-billion dollar” oil pipelines and transportation systems, looking likely.

“Once you start getting those in, then people will start to see stability and operate in Kuwait. At the end of the day, a lot of corporate activity is hinged upon government projects, so if those government projects don’t come through, you won’t have as much corporate demand.”

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