Message from the organiser

Christine Davidson, group event director, DMG Events outlines The Hotel Show agenda and what’s new at this year’s event.

The hospitality landscape in the Middle East and Africa is transforming at an unprecedented rate with 694 hotel projects and 188,817 rooms in the pipeline. That’s a lot of hotel rooms, terraces, lounges, restaurants, cafés, pools, spas, gyms, and more to be fit-out and equipped over the next five years. Dubai is forecast to have over 100,000 rooms by 2020 — positioning it as a major contracts market. And as a world class destination, it remains the perfect home for The Hotel Show Dubai, the region’s leading meeting place for the hospitality industry.

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There is a real buzz as mega-projects such as Dubai Parks and Resorts, and Dubai Pearl in Dubai, the Louvre, Guggenheim and Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi, the Qatar Fifa World Cup Stadium and many more begin to take shape and drive demand for products and solutions. Dubai is definitely a contracts market and an inspirational environment.

The Hotel Show is co-located with The Leisure Show to provide a 360-degree view of the region’s hospitality and leisure industries, providing everything needed to build, operate and maintain hotels, restaurants and leisure facilities of all styles and scope.

As we move towards the 16th edition of the event, 650 companies and thousands of global brands join us from over 45 countries. With larger pavilions this year from Turkey, China and Portugal joining an already impressive International Village with exhibitors from more than 45 countries, this year we are providing the largest sourcing, knowledge-share, and networking event across the Middle East and Africa. Last year, over US $6.2 million worth of business deals were conducted on-site at The Hotel Show by over 18,500 attendees from 98 countries.

The show has changed dramatically over the years with increased educational content providing essential learning for the industry. This year we see the introduction of two new theatres supporting the already popular Vision Conference, which will once again welcome over 80+ global industry leaders sharing vision, ideas, views and insight.

Technology is this year’s big trend for hoteliers and restaurateurs, so the introduction of TecSec, the new technology and security summit, makes absolute sense. We all keep hearing about what millennials want, so now the big brands advise how to deliver it. With sessions by industry leaders, the message is you don’t have to be an IT expert to understand how to deliver the ultimate seamless guest experience.

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