Do you think there is room for more brands in the hotel industry?
I think the success of brands here for example, such as The Address and their second brand Vida, both these brands really, like Jumeirah, having a powerful platform of top quality hotels and operations already within Dubai and Dubai being such a showcase city and very much a tourism and travel hub as so many people come here that as I say, the success of these brands has proven that there is a niche in that market and I think it’s also very appropriate that home grown Arabic brands should become very strong and powerful not only in this region but on a global basis. After all you have to say that GGC nationals are probably the best travellers in the world and certainly highly sought after travellrs for any destination worldwide.
What do you expect to be the main talking points at AHIC 2014?
I think one of the big trends will be to really get ready for what I think is a very exciting and positive period coming up and that is how to deliver the value for the investors here in Dubai for all the new hotels that are under planning stages right now and how we can come up as professionals within the industry to meet the challenge, achieving for example the kind of targets that have been set for us by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, for say tourism and travel. We have 20 million visitors by 2020, Dubai has been awarded the World Expo 2020 and we are going to have to build an awful lot of hotels between now and 2020, so it’s a beautiful challenge to have and it’s the kind of challenge we need but certainly we have to, as they say, hit the ground running to make sure we deliver on that and I think an awful lot of the talk around AHIC this year was focused on Dubai itself.
Jumeirah is developing another hotel in Dubai in the fourth phase of Madinat Jumeirah; how is that progressing?
Well that project is on schedule for opening in Q1 of 2016 and will have 435 bedrooms and is really a very, very appropriately designed hotel which will sort of join together the very modern structures of Jumeirah Beach Hotel and Burj al Arab and the more traditional design of Madinat Jumeriah, though I do accept that Madinat Jumeriah was opened after Jumeirah Beach Hotel and Burj al Arab but that’s just the way it happened and I think that’s going to be very significant.
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Also we’re fortunate to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dubai Holding; Dubai Holding, through its verticals of Tecom and Dubai Property Group, has a lot of ambitions to develop hotels in Dubai and we know that we’ll be working very closely with the parent company to deliver on the expectation as far as that’s concerned.
So there will be yet more Jumeirah hotels in Dubai?
I would certainly expect so!
Are there any further expansion plans for Jumeirah you can share?
One of our big priorities in addition to development within the UAE and particularly Dubai and Abu Dhabi is also that we are in deep discussion with a number of parties — so nothing has been signed yet hence the reason that we haven’t announced anything — but we are in discussion with a number of parties in Saudi Arabia and we are very keen to broaden the footprint of Jumeirah within our home region.
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