LIVE FROM ARABIAN TRAVEL MARKET 2014: DAY ONE
Welcome to HotelierMiddleEast.com's rolling live coverage of Arabian Travel Market 2014. We'll bring you all the latest announcements from the event at Dubai World Trade Centre, exclusive news and essential industry gossip...
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06.10pm: Delegates streaming out of DWTC as the first day of the exhibition comes to a close. Only day one, and there has already been plenty of breaking news. Now it's time for the evening parties and plenty of networking.
05.54pm: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has just passed by our stand on his official tour of the exhbition before it closes out its first day.
05.45pm: The 1743-room Anjum Hotel Makkah looks set to finally open next month. With expansions to that property as well as other developments in the city over the next few years, CEO Claude Chesnais tells us there are no plans to expand beyond Saudi Arabia.
05.30pm: Trump Hotel Collection vice president hotel development and acquisitions IMEA Shafi Syed has been in post for seven months now, with negotiations already underway for hotels in a range of key cities. The main targets are the usual suspects of Dubai, Jeddah, Riyadh, Doha and Muscat, but Syed says he’d also really like to secure a hotel in Istanbul, and potentially in Bodrum too, and that Cairo offers a lot of opportunities.
04:25pm: EXCLUSIVE: Emirates Grand is due to launch a serviced apartments property by the end of the year. Emirates Grand Hotel Apartments will feature 300 units with a mix of studio one- and two-bedroom apartments and will be located on Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road. Furthermore, Emirates Grand will also rebrand the 127-key Tulip Inn Sharjah as an Emirates Grand property by Q2 of 2015.
04:15pm: While we knew that Lufthansa was launching its premium economy class, we can now reveal that this travel class will be seen in the Middle East in the first half of 2015. However passengers from Dubai flying to Frankfurt and then onwards to destinations like Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington DC will most likely experience it by the end of this year.
04.00pm Rotana today have announced 10 new hotels in the Middle East in new markets Turkey, Iran, Tanzania and Jordan. All of the hotels are to open by 2018 and Guy Hutchison COO, MEA, Rotana is currently working on the global sales network for these new markets. Meanwhile, occupancy is strong for Rotana's most recent openings in Al Ain and Salalah, with both having seen 40 - 50% occupancy in the first two months of being open. More to come on this story shortly... stay tuned!
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04.00pm: Qatar Tourism Authority is looking to alter its corporate: leisure ratio from 70:30 to 60:40 by adding a theme park, an aquapark and a commercial port due to open by 2017. Speaking to Hotelier Middle East, Chairman Issa M. Al-Mohannadi said that he is not concerned about the types of leisure tourists that are attracted to the country either, and says that you cannot control the people that come into Qatar, and you cannot ban 95% just because 5% are badly behaved!
03.45pm: Emaar Hospitality Group is to launch a new hotel brand - Manzil - that celebrates authentic Arabesque design aesthetics and culinary flavours. The first property under the new brand will be Manzil Downtown Dubai (formerly Al Manzil), located opposite Souk Al Bahar.
03.30pm: Finally, Egypt is back on the radar! It’s great to hear Jumeirah president and group CEO Gerald Lawless, Marriott International president MEA Alex Kyriakidis and Trump Hotel Collection VP hotel development and acquisitions IMEA Shafi Syed say that they are looking closely at Egypt for expansion. Kyriakidis said that in particular, there are lots of opportunities for Marriott to do conversions, while Syed said he saw great prospects for development in Cairo.
03.00pm: Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara has launched a 10-villa complex called Royal Pavilion Villas by Qasr Al Sarab. The new villas add to the resort's existing portfolio of 154 rooms and 42 villas.
02.45pm: Ritz Carlton Bahrain GM Mark Neukomm said that the GCC is the hotel's biggest source market with Saudi Arabia seeing the biggest positive growth. He would like to see a lot more growth from Qatar and the European segment.
02.40pm: During a session on Dubai's 2020 tourism vision, Marriott International chief sales & marketing officer MEA Neal Jones emphasised the need for the industry to look beyond that 2020 target. He also said Marriott was going to start reaching out to the young generation more as they own the wallets for the next 20 years.
02.30pm: Make you sure you visit the Shaza Hotels stand at ATM. We have it on good authority from CEO Simon Coombs that the brand will be making some big announcements this week, even signing a deal at the stand itself. We are sworn to secrecy for now, but will unveil the news as soon as we can!
01:00pm: Elaf Group's Jeddah property, Elaf Galleria, has been delayed. The 371-key property was originally due to open in 2014, but will now open in Q1 of 2015, according to Elaf Hotels Company vice president Ahmed Ali Najjar.
11.20am: Big news from Hilton Worldwide, which is to open the UAE's third Garden Inn, attached to Mall of the Emirates.
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10.35am: Jumeirah Group is bound to attract a lot of attention at ATM, following Gerald Lawless’ revelation yesterday that the group could bring back the Venu Hotels brand. Lawless said the luxury hotelier was “seriously considering” launching in a second brand in the contemporary lifestyle segment. Venu was abandoned back in 2011 in light of the global economic crisis.
10.10am: Did you know the Oetker Collection of hotels is looking at the Middle East as an important market? While the closest properties to this region are in the Seychelles and Morocco, the brand is exploring options in Istanbul, Oman and even Dubai.
10.00am: Wolfgang Neumann, president and CEO of Rezidor Hotel Group, has revealed the Hotel Missoni Kuwait will be rebranded as a Quorvus Collection property.
09.50am: We recently heard that Bill Keffer had been promoted to the role of general manager at JW Marriott Marquis Dubai Hotel. Congratulations Bill! But did you wonder when former GM Rupprecht Queitsch had gone? Hotelier spied him merrily brandishing new business cards — this GM has turned entrepreneur and set up INHOCO, otherwise known as the International Hospitality Consulting Group, based in JLT in Dubai. It’s very early days, but Queitsch says he’s partnered with some like-minded hoteliers and has been amazed by the interest there is in doing business in Dubai.
09.35am: Also developing a new brand is Pascal Eppink, formerly GM at Banyan Tree Al Wadi in Ras Al Khaimah before moving to China for the past three years. Eppink is now back in the Middle East and responsible for creating the new four star hotel brand for Omran, the Omani tourism developer. As managing director of Atana Hotels, Eppink says one property has already been converted under the brand, but that there is a lot more to come.
09.20am: The AHIC and ATM week is a great one for catching up with some familiar faces. We’ve seen Marc Dardenne, the former CEO of Emaar Hospitality Group and man behind creating The Address Hotels + Resorts brand. Dardenne is now based in Singapore and gearing up to launch the first Patina Hotel there, a brand he has developed for a hotel owner in Singapore. We saw him at AHIC, where he hinted there could be plans to bring Patina to Dubai.
09.05am: With a couple of hours to go until the exhibiton starts, the Hotelier and Arabian Travel News teams are excited about the next few days. If you are coming to the Dubai World Trade Centre over the next few days, please do try and visit us on stand HC5010.