After 12 months in operation, Conrad Dubai has established a solid business base. As the team celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, they reveal plans to grow MICE business, increase the number of corporate accounts and attract more local custom to the F&B venues - all part and parcel of also bringing the property into TripAdvisor’s ranking of the top 10 hotels in Dubai
Conrad Dubai opened this time last year, bringing 555 new rooms to Sheikh Zayed Road, along with more than 4000m2 of meetings and conference space, a luxury spa and seven restaurants and bars. The hotel, led at the time by GM Mario Ferraro, was long delayed, having originally been expected to open in 2011.
After a series of construction-related hold-ups, the hotel opened on September 18 2013, marking the debut of Hilton Worldwide’s luxury Conrad brand in the GCC.
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The long pre-opening served to create anticipation in the market, with hoteliers clamouring to work at the Conrad — a reported 5100 people attended a recruitment open day — and the industry wondering if the hotel would live up to its claim of offering dining venues to rival those in popular DIFC.
A year on, and there has been a significant change at the top. Ferraro left in December to head up the opening of JW Marriott Venice in his native Italy and was replaced by Austrian national Andreas Jersabeck, general manager at Hilton Doha since April 2013, following roles with Hilton in Ukraine and Croatia.
Other than that, the executive committee remains largely the same and its approach has been one of gradual evolution and improvements to fit with ever-changing market needs, rather than any drastic changes or shifts in strategy.
Jersabeck says that overall, he’s “pretty satisfied with the results we have achieved”. The team won’t reveal numbers, but director of business development Sanjay Nair, who started at the hotel just two days after it opened, says Conrad Dubai is sitting in line with its Sheikh Zayed Road competitors for occupancy.
“If you look at any of the STR Benchmarks, year to date they are close to 80% and we are around that benchmark,” says Nair, attributing success in the first few months to the buoyancy of the trading climate in Dubai, business from big groups, the festive period, and Saudi holidays.
The room inventory means Conrad Dubai can take a group needing 300-350 rooms for a four- to five-day period relatively easily, putting it into a pool of six or seven hotels in the city able to do that, reports Nair. Conference groups have formed the lion’s share of business, but incentive groups from international markets are growing, and the hotel also capitalises on big events at Dubai World Trade Centre.
“The key source markets are basically what feed into Dubai. The GCC is big for us, Western Europe, the US because they are more corporate focused markets,” continues Nair.
Jersabeck has already identified the need to “grow even more” into the MICE market during the second year of operations, as well as increase the number of wedding bookings and corporate accounts.
“Don’t forget, MICE business is booked 12-18 months in advance so obviously we couldn’t take too much advantage of that this year. Although we had some, I think next year you will see the results of everything we have done to put ourselves in the market internationally and locally, and we will see this growing very fast next year. We use agencies, we have our international sales offices in Frankfurt, in Paris, in London, and basically we are in regular touch with them to tell them what facilities we have,” says Jersabeck.
“There are two ballrooms, 4000m2 of meetings space, so that is unique and that will give us a big advantage over our competitors that don’t have those facilities,” he says.
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