Rotana to more than double staff numbers by 2020

Speaking exclusively to Hotelier Middle East, Rotana CEO, Omer Kaddouri revealed that the company would more than double its number of employees by 2020.

With 50 properties open today, and another 50 in the pipeline for 2020, Rotana is set to operate 100 hotels by 2020 and have another 100 in the pipeline, according to Kaddouri.

The CEO, who took over from Selim Zyr in January commented: “We have about 12,000 colleagues at the moment and by 2020 when we’re operating 100 hotels we should double that to about 25,000.

“Obviously there’s a lot of work to be done to make sure they’re well trained and happy, and this will happen in parallel to us opening and signing new hotels.”

At the moment, Rotana has up to 15 training programmes covering junior to senior roles and there is a strong focus for recruiting locally according to Kaddouri: “It’s very important for us to have as many locals working for us as possible, wherever we are based.

“In Sudan we have 80 – 85% locals working at our hotels. In Egypt, 99% of our staff are Egyptian. Here in the Emirates it’s much smaller but we have to look at the population as well and there are so many more hotels here that are opening, so each has a smaller and smaller share of the locals – but we work very hard.”

Kaddouri highlighted Rotana’s Duroob programme as crucial to this. The programme is aimed at attracting local talent into the company and trying to develop them within their roles.

He said: “We’ve been fairly successful with the programme. It’s more important for the GCC because local populations are small and the hotel industry isn’t considered to be the ideal career, so we’re really trying to change that mindset.”