16. Rami Moukarzel, Vice President Development & Acquisitions MENA, Louvre Hotels Group
Louvre Hotels Group will bring over 40 new budget properties to the region
Following 12 years of experience in the Middle East hospitality industry, Rami Moukarzel (son of Amine Moukarzel), has been the Louvre Hotels Group’s new vice president of development and acquisitions in the MENA region for the last 12 months. In this role, the younger Moukarzel oversees a pipeline of 35 new hotels, expected to open by 2018. The group, Moukarzel confirms, aims to have 10-12 new hotels opening in the region each year, and has opened 12 new hotels in the region in 2016 alone.
Since Moukarzel’s appointment at Louvre, the company has begun increased expansion into KSA, with entry into Jeddah, Tabouk, Sharma and Unaizah. Other areas of expansion since Moukarzel’s tenure include Qatar, Algeria, multi-cities in Iran, as well as Korbous and Hammamet in Tunisia. According to Moukarzel, the group is also expecting to sign properties in Syria and Iraq. Upcoming properties in the region for the Louvre Group include branches of the five-star Royal Tulip expected to open in Beirut, Sharjah and Tunisia this year, Bahrain in 2017, and Muscat in 2018.
The group also plans to roll out more than 40 hotels in the MENA region, under the budget brands Campanile and Premiere Classe, in the next three to five years. With an ambitious global pipeline of 850 budget-friendly hotels worldwide, Moukarzel comments, “None of our competitors provide such a comprehensive turnkey solution for budget hotels.”
Looking to the future, Moukarzel says: “The essential ingredients to maintaining success in the region, I believe, is establishing trust, transparency and confidence with our stakeholders, which includes hotel owners, developers and our customers (both internal and external). The experiences I have accumulated developing a wide scope of hotel brands, from the ultra-luxury to the budget segments, over the past 10 years in MENA, has enabled us to stay ahead of the curve, evident in our continued growth in the region despite the political and economic challenges facing us.”
By the numbers
1 Number of years in role
1 Number of years with company
60 Number of Middle East operating hotels as of July 2016
35 Number of Middle East pipeline hotels as of July 2016
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