Saturation in the city?
When it came to question whether our GMs believe the hotel markets of Dubai and Abu Dhabi has reached saturation point, there was quite a split in opinion. A healthy 68.3% believe Dubai isn’t saturated, although “development” and “diversification” are cited as elements that are needed to ensure stability.
The picture is not quite the same in Abu Dhabi where 40% of our GMs believe the market is saturated with “too many hotels” and an “unrealistic” pipeline.
But we all know that two heads are better than one so why not market Dubai and Abu Dhabi together? Well 75% say no (marginally up on last year’s response to this question), so the idea is not favourable — may the competition continue!
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Our GMs didn’t feel that saturation is a major issue in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but they did reveal that these states are facing their own unique challenges.
We asked our general managers what they felt were the major issues for both country’s hospitality industries. For Qatar, more than half of our respondents said the alcohol ban was the biggest problem, followed by attracting new markets (38.3%) and competition (35%).
In Saudi Arabia, the biggest challenge by far, according to our GMs is Saudisation (61.7%), while in joint second was recruitment and training (45%) and attracting new markets (45%) in third. It’s worth keeping an eye on how both these countries tackle their perceived problems over the coming years.
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