04. Alex Kyriakidis, President & Managing Director, Middle East & Africa, Marriott International
The next year is set to witness many new openings from Marriott International, which has signed a host of new projects
Marriott International’s latest growth pipeline in the Middle East will see its footprint increase in priority markets such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Ten new properties representing 4,600 rooms are set to open across these two countries between 2016 and 2017. In Saudi Arabia, the company has revealed that 21 new hotels with approximately 4,200 rooms have been slated to open by 2025.
And while Marriott International declined to share any details with Hotelier for this feature, the operator is definitely undergoing substantial expansion; not to say the least about the upcoming merger with Starwood — at the time of writing, the companies are waiting on anti-trust clearance from China.
Taking Marriott International as a standalone company, in the last year it has signed many new hotels and brands. Residence Inn will debut in the UAE, with the Residence Inn by Marriott Al Jaddaf due in 2019. The company is also set to launch UAE’s first Renaissance hotel. And the Renaissance Downtown Hotel Dubai will be preceded by Abu Dhabi’s first Marriott Hotel, the 315-room five-star Marriott Hotel Downtown Abu Dhabi, as well as the 64-suite Marriott Executive Apartments Downtown Abu Dhabi. UAE will add to its Autograph Collection: the 86-room La Ville Hotel City Walk Dubai, the 68-suite La Ville Apartments City Walk Dubai, and 500-room Lapita Hotel, are all set to open by Q4 2016. It’s also the long-stay segment where Alex Kyriakidis is seeing growth. After signing the 300-suite Marriott Executive Apartments in Doha, Kyriakidis told Hotelier: “The long-stay element is beginning to ramp up [in our pipeline]. The other key change that’s happening in the pipeline in the future is the relative decline, as a proportion, of upper upscale and luxury, in terms of percentage of rooms signed every year, and the expansion of the quality-tier and budget segment.”
Marriott International also signed a MFA with Dur Hospitality this year. Under the agreement, the first Courtyard by Marriott and Residence Inn by Marriott properties will open in Yanbu in Saudi Arabia.
Kyriakidis said: “Our view hasn’t changed since we did the 2020 Middle East & Africa vision when I joined the company in that the UAE, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt (despite its challenges), South Africa and Nigeria are super-growth markets. And by super-growth, we mean that these are markets where we could easily see ourselves having at least 10,000 rooms — putting Starwood aside for one minute.”
With the addition of Starwood, Marriott is looking at 80 hotels and 22,000 rooms in the UAE, 50 hotels and 14,000 rooms in Saudi Arabia, and 22 hotels and nearly 9,000 hotels in Egypt. “The focus for us will be, now that we have this phenomenal muscle in the market, how do we leverage that muscle? Once we put our heads together you can expect an announcement that will launch our refreshed MEA 2020 strategy,” added Kyriakidis. We can’t wait to see how that affects next year’s ranking.
By the numbers:
4.5 Number of years in role
4.5 Number of years with company
53 Number of Middle East operating hotels
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