Marriott International is set to open 44 Residence Inn properties by 2020 in the Middle East, Diane Mayer, vice president and global brand manager for Residence Inn, told Hotelier Middle East.
“Right now we have one Residence Inn, and we have three in our pipeline; next is Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Algeria, but we want to grow 44 more by 2020 which is pretty dramatic growth on the base of one,” revealed Mayer.
Compared to the number of travellers in the region, she believes there is not enough extended-stay accommodation in the Middle East.“One of the main reasons we are here is that there is so much growth in travel in the region. The numbers we have are 75 million travellers going to 195 million by 2030, so in general there is tonnes of opportunity in this region,” said Mayer.
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"Globally one third of all business travel room nights are part of an extended stay. What we see is where it is 30% to 33% in most regions, it is closer to 40% in the Middle East.
"At the same time there is very little, practically zero lodging product that is built specifically for extended stay. So we feel with the growth here, there is a huge, huge opportunity for Residence Inn and Marriott Executive Apartments,” she explained.
While the group has announced Residence Inn properties in Jizan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait City, due to open in 2013 and 2015 respectively, no further details on the remaining properties were revealed.
Marriott International experienced 11.2% increase in RevPAR across the region in Q1 2013, as reported my Hotelier in May 2013.
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