Rotana area vice president, Dubai & Northern Emirates David Prince is optimistic about the forecast of Dubai’s hospitality market, reporting that the operator is trading better than market levels.
Prince told Hotelier: “There are many commentators in the market that would now be cautiously optimistic about Dubai. Personally speaking I would choose to be optimistic; I would be more bullish and drop the ‘cautiously’ element of it because our YTD performance is actually very strong.”
He shared that the entire Dubai market has seen a growth in occupancy of 3.6% versus last year, and added: “From my perspective, Rotana has achieved an occupancy growth of 5.5% year-on-year, and we’re outperforming the market as well which is a very good position to be in.
“The slightly poor news is that from a rate perspective we’re still struggling. We are seeing declining rates but having said that, the rate decline YTD is only 4% which if you compare that to last year, when we were looking at 10%, I would suggest that the 4% is a very good number.”
Prince continued: “From a Rotana perspective, I’m very comfortable with how we’re trading. Overall if you look at how Rotana hotels are performing, we have a RevPAR growth of just over 2% for the YTD. Hence I’m optimistic. If I look at how we’re currently trading for April, and then May going forward, then it’s looking like positive numbers on the books and I would hope that we carry that through to the year end and finish well ahead of budget and ahead of last year, so growth all around.”
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