Demonstrating Aldar’s success, the company last year saw occupancy growth of up to 15% compared to an average of
8-10% for the emirate. While average daily rates were more or less flat, and even dropped at some points throughout the year, Aldar saw increases in room rates.
“We’ve grown faster than the market; we have more facilities and connectivity,” reflects Rahman.
“If you think about what’s currently happening in terms of people coming to Abu Dhabi — for Yas Waterworld, for Ferrari World, for the plaza hotels, for F1 and the Flash events, our key focus points, the conferences and events that are currently going on in Abu Dhabi, and there’s a big focus on that — so marketing Yas Island is marketing Abu Dhabi, because there hasn’t historically been anything like this.”
| Advertisement |
Further afield, Rahman discusses the possibility of the firm carrying out a hotel acquisition in order to secure its debut Dubai property, which would also have links to Yas Island, but would not compete with the Dubai leisure offering, he explains.
“Dubai is a market that nobody can ignore, especially on the hospitality and leisure side, so it’s very interesting to us. Our focus is on a stable recurring revenue stream. In order to turn on the tap straight away, we think that acquisitions are the way to go and so we’re going to continue focusing on development, but we’re going to look at acquisitions.
“If you look at the Yas Island mantra it’s ‘live, stay, play’, so it’s focused on the diaspora of the global market, it’s focused a lot more on families than maybe Dubai is, although Dubai obviously still caters to families and we want this to be a focal point for corporate and for businesses coming out for conferences and for seminars on a larger strategic scale.
“So I think what we’re trying to say is we’re not competing with Dubai — we’re not creating direct competition for Dubai — we have a slightly differentiated offering and we’re happy with that,” he explains.
While Yas Island is adding value to Abu Dhabi and to Dubai, it is also being marketed for the first time as an independent destination.
“We’ve moved into a wider marketing initiative with Miral, with Etihad on offering the island as a destination which hasn’t historically been done — it used to be ad hoc bookings but now we go out to World Travel Market and AHIC. When we’re at the big road shows we market Yas as a MICE destination and we’re picking up a significant number of bookings.”
Article continues on next page ...
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
