The ballroom, with private entrance and natural light, is expected to secure big business for the hotel.
DESTINATION UPDATE
Having previously managed hotels in Dubai, Key has had two years to get used to the Abu Dhabi dynamic ahead of opening — and he says that in 2013, positive changes are afoot.
“We’re probably opening at a good time, the business is coming back, the early signs from the opening two quarters of the year are fairly healthy, fairly positive,” reports Key.
“Certainly the Starwood hotels that I see the numbers on are all doing better occupancy than they did last year. Average rate is up.”
According to Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi), there was a 12% rise in the number of guests staying in the UAE capital’s hotels the first half of this year compared to 2012.
Year-to-date hotel revenues rose 16% to AED 2.7bn ($734m) despite a slight fall-off of 3% in average room rate to $122. During the first half of this year, 1,333,339 guests checked into Abu Dhabi accommodation delivering 4,226,604 guest nights — a rise of 25% on the same period in 2012.
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On average the guest stayed 3.17 nights — which was up 12% on last year, which translates into an occupancy rate of 71%, up 8% on the first half of 2012.
“The city is becoming a little more segmented,” observes Key. “If you’re talking about Abu Dhabi now you’re talking about the customer being able to choose where he wants to stay versus in the past it was just where has available rooms.
“I think if you are purely operating in the leisure world then you obviously have to wait for Abu Dhabi to get more global awareness, whereas for us it’s always been a business hub — oil and gas is based here, the government is based here, we are less concerned about our ability to drive business into the hotel because we cover a lot of bases. We are not just going for that leisure traveller.”
He observed potential competition between hotels going for the convention business, as a result of new hotels in the ADNEC area as well.
“I don’t necessarily see this as a hotel that is going to be reliant on the convention business, we’re a little bit further away from the convention centre, but there are a lot of new hotels around the convention centre and there’s obviously a need to generate business for those hotels because it is a total hotel room supply issue — if other hotels are cutting their rates throughout the city then it tends to be that the pricing throughout the city will have a negative push downwards.
We’ll not get involved in that. I don’t think we need to, I think given our location and the service levels that we’re providing, we will not get into a rate war with other hotels.”
Performance data for Abu Dhabi will be interesting to watch, but Key’s eye will be on delivering a training plan that will ensure service matches the product he has been “blessed with”. “We’ve got to really deliver on the service level. The level of service at the St. Regis is expected to be at the very top of the hotel spectrum and we intend to deliver on that,” he concludes.
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