Majid Al Futtaim has massive hotel plans for MENA

Majid Al Futtaim are one of the major hotel developers in the country, and have recently completed an extensive US $100m renovation on the Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates.

Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) CEO hotels Simon Barlow told Hotelier Middle East: “Currently, we have 10 hotels in Dubai, with just over 2900 rooms. This makes us the largest hotel owner in Dubai and we want to consolidate that position going forward.

He added: “We have numerous plans to add more hotels to existing malls in Dubai. We have an opportunity at the Mall of the Emirates, the Deira City Centre Mall and the Mirdiff City Centre Mall, where no hotels exist currently [on or adjacent to the mall]."

MAF also owns two hotels in Bahrain that are operated under two of Starwood’s brands. Barlow said plans are on to build hotels in other markets, where it operates its malls.

“We are [also] planning to take hotels on to Majid Al Futtaim malls in places like Muscat, Oman; Cairo, Egypt; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and these are all in the pipeline at the moment, at the various stages of feasibility to build hotels alongside our mall developments.”

Barlow gave an insight into who the operators could be for the upcoming properties: “Historically there has been a strong relationship with AccorHotel (manages six of MAF's hotels), with Starwood (manages three properties), we recently launched a relationship with Hilton (manages one property) and our relationship has been more than 10 years with the Kempinski Group.”

“In addition to these, we are in talks with other management companies, and we are also in talks with our four existing operators to bring their other brands,” Barlow said.

MAF's hotel strategy is to build properties near or adjacent to its malls, of which it has 19 across countries in the GCC and MENA region.

Barlow said the group would be making major announcements of its future plans at the end of April.