New projects: Al Habtoor City Complex

Construction on the Al Habtoor City Complex began in 2013, and it was two years later that the ambitious project began to see returns, with The St. Regis Dubai being the first venue at the complex to open its doors at the end of 2015.

Following that was the W Dubai Al Habtoor City, which had its soft opening this summer.

The launch of The Westin Dubai Al Habtoor City is imminent, with the F&B options in The Atrium slowly springing to life, and La Perle Dragone scheduled for a March 2017 debut.

The project has been an immense undertaking, and one in which different players have been invested in a variety of ways — from the general managers at the tri-branded Starwood hotels on-site, to the La Perle Dragone launch team and the artist behind the region’s first resident show.

Hotelier Middle East meets all the players from the different venues within the complex to find out what they plan for the development, and how all of it ties together with Dubai Tourism’s mandate for the city.

The St. Regis Dubai

Al Habtoor City — Hotels complex commercial director Seema Pande is a confident woman, one who oversees a vast empire: Dubai’s first St. Regis, the UAE’s first W hotel and the largest Westin in the Middle East collectively offer nearly 1,600 rooms, 18 restaurants and lounges, two spas, 34 meeting and banqueting spaces and three ballrooms.

It’s no easy task, yet Pande, recently appointed to her role, is up for the challenge. As we photograph her in The St. Regis Dubai’s Churchill Suite, it’s clear that more than 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry in the UAE is set to be an asset.

She reveals that the complex has seen strong performance from traditional markets right across the GCC, including KSA, Asia Pacific led by the Indian market, Europe, specifically the UK, and China. “In terms of emerging markets, we have seen demand coming from Latin America and Africa too,” she adds.

Another demand driver is the push towards being seen as a MICE destination. Pande admits this is of importance, with facilities catering to a range of sizes. The St. Regis Dubai, for example, has six meeting rooms including the 800m2 Astor Ballroom. W Dubai Al Habtoor City has a 725m2 ballroom, with five studios for small meetings. At The Westin Dubai Al Habtoor City, there will be 14 meeting rooms of various sizes, as well as a 1,450m2 ballroom with a separate entrance and pre-function hall.

Pande comments: “The Dubai calendar is busy all year round, with international and regional exhibitions and conferences. Recently, we have seen strong demand from Asia with citywide conferences and it’s clear that international corporations are choosing Dubai as a destination for their major events.”

Combining hospitality, entertainment and residential developments, Pande says that Al Habtoor City has a lot to offer.

“It’s our vision that Al Habtoor City will be the new ‘go to’ destination on Sheikh Zayed Road,” she concludes.

La Perle by Dragone

La Perle by Dragone, the region’s first permanent show housed in an aqua-theatre, is set to target group and MICE bookings from its opening in March 2017 onwards.

The 1,300-seat venue, located in Al Habtoor City, will have 450 performances of the show per year — twice nightly, five days a week. It will feature a cast of 60 artists and 80 technicians. The theatre itself will feature an ‘aqua-stage’, filled with 2.5 million litres of water, and will have the ability to change from a dry platform to aquatic stage and vice versa.

Tickets will range from AED 399 to AED 999 (US $110-272).

It’s the first product of its kind in the region, but La Perle by Dragone director of sales Kent Cooper is not fazed. He is set to lead commercial operations including direct sales, ticketing, food and beverage, merchandise and sponsorship sales.

Cooper, with 25 years of hospitality experience, says he “jumped” at the opportunity. “It really was the ultimate in hospitality, that you get to be part of creating an experience that is once-in-a-lifetime for people. And that’s why we’re all in hospitality at the end of the day, it’s to create experiences,” he says, with enthusiasm.

Cooper continues: “I’ve been here 15 years. This was an opportunity to support DTCM, support Dubai and give a little bit back to the community, and do something brand new and not too far off from hospitality.”

He reveals the La Perle team has been in conversation with “every hotel company, every hotel, every travel agent, DMC” and the response has been overwhelming. MICE business, he stresses, is on the team’s radar.

“We’re looking at the long lead business and that’s through DMCs and hotel sales teams. We are well above projections on our groups’ business, with 50 group leads on our books already, all the way into 2019. From a business aspect, this is where theatre is so powerful.”

While he currently estimates MICE will be 20% of the business (“on the low side,” he adds), Cooper admits the demand is more than that.

La Perle is also working with hotels to raise awareness of what the resident show can offer guests. One element of this is the ‘concierge programme’, where the team is ensuring that every hotel is enabled to book online for its guests in a timely fashion, showing them real-time inventory.

There is also investment into creating a bespoke booking engine for every hotel, as well as booking websites and DMCs, of which Cooper says, the team has already contracted the top 50 in Dubai. “We’re all here to increase demand drivers, and ideally lengthen guest stays,” adds Cooper. Group bookings are currently being taken with a view to launch the booking website to B2B clients and the travel trade in late October, and open up the B2C channel a month later.

Once La Perle is stabilised, Cooper is projecting approximately 90% tourists, and adds: “If you think about the DTCM mandate and our mandate, we are completely synced.”

He says his time as a hotelier has helped him in this role by way of understanding “how the travel trade works, how the corporate market works, how the hotels work — what they’re looking for, what’s important to them, how they make money, and, very importantly, how they transact”.

Cooper concludes: “Dubai is ready for this, and it’s all coming together.”

Westin Dubai Al Habtoor City

The Westin Dubai Al Habtoor City will be the largest Westin hotel in Europe, Africa and the Middle East when it opens, standing 41 storeys tall on Sheikh Zayed Road with 1,004 rooms. At the time of going to print, Starwood Hotels and Resorts said the property will open in August; however the website isn’t taking bookings until October 15.

Overseeing this mammoth property is general manager Khaled Ghaleb, who has more than 20 years of experience in the industry working in luxury hotels across the UAE, Egypt and France. Prior to this, he was at Starwood’s Grosvenor House, A Luxury Collection Hotel, in Dubai where he was hotel manager for four years.

This hotel marks Ghaleb’s fourth hotel opening in the UAE. Focusing on the location of the complex, which he says is an advantage, Ghaleb says: “With the vision of the chairman, you can see the magnitude of the project we are part of. Like my colleagues have explained, we will not leave any stone unturned in terms of market segments — we cater for everybody between the three brands.

“With the Westin, suites are 16% of the inventory, and the layout of the rooms makes it appealing for both leisure and business.”

Ghaleb emphasises the Eat Well pillar of the brand, a concept that is incorporated within all the restaurants’ philosophies. He says: “We have the all-day dining called Seasonal Tastes, which accommodates about 360 pax. It has seven different food stations and cuisines, and is all cooked à la minute. Then we have a New York Italian, Il Capo, along with Cook Hall, an American gastropub, and these two concepts are with our partners, Culinary Concepts. A concept that we’re developing is the pool lounge bar; based on flame so it’s all grilled items, and it’s called Firefly. We’ve got a grab-and-go corner in the lobby. It offers a variety of grab-and-go items. And Blinq, which is the main bar in the hotel, is very glitzy, glamorous and very Hollywood.”

W Dubai Al Habtoor City

The general manager of W Dubai Al Habtoor City, Peter Katusak-Huzsvar, is a W man, through and through. With over eight years’ experience overseeing the opening of W hotels across Europe, Middle East and China, his journey with the W brand began in the Middle East as director of operations for the opening of W Doha Hotel and Residences in Qatar, followed by general manager for W St. Petersburg, Russia and W Guangzhou, China. He started his career, he tells me, in the late 80s in Germany with Kempinski Hotels and Resorts.

When he saw the scale of the project in Al Habtoor City, he reveals, the decision to move to Dubai was a no-brainer.

The 33-storey property, which saw its soft opening in June 2016, offers 365 rooms and suites, where the design was led by Singapore-based firm Silverfox Studios. Its F&B includes all-day dining Level Seven, the W Lounge (which is also the check-in area), Japanese-Korean import Namu, and the Wet Deck.The general manager quietly corrects me when I call it “F&B” — he says: “At the W, as we call it B&F, as beverage makes money and beverage is the culture of the W in terms of mixology.”

Katusak-Huzsvar also echoes Pande’s comments on MICE, and says marketing the complex as a whole is a major benefit in driving business. “It will differentiate us from the competition and give us a competitive advantage, so whenever we work on bringing big groups, that will something that is a plus. Not just the brand experience, but the size and the opportunity all around the complex,” he comments.

“I’m a big believer in authenticity and consistency, and we are trying to have an insider approach and bring what’s new and what’s next to our guests and clients,” concludes Katusak-Huzsvar.