When it opened 12 months ago, Rixos Bab Al Bahr introduced the all-inclusive concept to the Middle East. Parinaaz Navdar catches up with general manager Haytham Omar to find out how the hotel exceeded its performance targets for the first year of operations
Rixos Bab Al Bahr opened in the UAE in February 2014, bringing the all-inclusive concept to the Middle East for the first time. The hotel — the largest in the northern emirate of Ras Al Khaimah — comprises three pyramid-shaped buildings, and opened two years after the brand’s first UAE property, Rixos The Palm, located on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah. Exercising a phased opening strategy, Rixos Bab Al Bahr launched with 179 keys, followed by an additional 310 rooms in March and a further 170 in August.
General manager Haytham Omar, who has led the team since the pre-opening, reveals that high demand meant the final pyramid was opened ahead of schedule.
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“We were planning to open the second building at the end of March or early April, but we opened it on March 1 instead because there was very good demand; so that was another 310 rooms,” Omar explains.
“We continued with both pyramids for the entire summer, until August and the Eid holidays, when we decided to open the third pyramid, which contains the other 170 rooms.
“And so from August 1, we had the full inventory online. However, from day one we had opened all of the facilities in the hotel and all of the restaurants, because these were already ready — the à la carte restaurants, the entertainment square and the kids’ clubs.”
While the hotel managed to draw in international guests, who were perhaps used to seeing the all-inclusive model in European and US destinations, Omar admits the concept was new to the local market, and this posed a few challenges.
“We were always compared with the price of hotels that offer bed and breakfast.
“So people would see a property in the northern emirates for AED 500 (US $136), and we are at around AED 1200 ($327) for example,” Omar states.
“They don’t see the value because they don’t understand what the term ‘all-inclusive’ means. So we lost a lot of opportunities at the beginning, until we started educating people in our marketing campaigns.”
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