Since establishing its first property, Rose Garden Hotel Apartments in Bur Dubai over a decade ago, and quickly following this up with a second property two years later, Rose Garden Hotel Apartments in Al Barsha, UAE-headquartered Rose International Hotels Management has been quietly operating under the radar while resolutely staying focused on the hotel apartments sector.
With the opening of its third property, the four-star Rose Park Hotel Al Barsha, the company ventures out of the extended stay accommodation arena and into mid-scale hotel operations for the first time. According to the operator’s senior executives, the move reflects the company’s commitment to the mid-market hotel sector and its opportunities, while signalling an overall direction towards establishing a company benchmark for operational and aesthetic standards for future growth.
Speaking to Hotelier Express on the eve of the Rose Park Hotel Al Barsha opening were Rose Hotels & Hotel Apartments cluster director of operations Yousuf Malimar and cluster director of sales and marketing Thamem Razick.
In elaborating on company positioning in view of the recent shift, Razick, a decade-long veteran with the operator, explains: “Rose International Hotels Management is positioned to be among the top local hotel operators in the hospitality industry in the United Arab Emirates. It is our intent to strive to become the preferred choice in the Middle East for family-friendly hospitality accommodation in the region.”
While Razick is responsible for driving footfall into the hotel, the responsibility of looking after hotel guests and ensuring their wellbeing and satisfaction falls on the shoulders of Malimar, who has also been with the company for more than a decade.
“I take the responsibility for the whole operation of the three [Rose] properties except for sales. Meeting the satisfaction of the guests is first priority,” says Malimar, who adds that he avidly monitors, analyses and responds to online and offline guest reviews and feedback.
Tasked with sales and marketing strategies for the hotel and essentially responsible for generating revenue, Razick says that identifying and aggressively pursuing key source markets via multiple channels is key: “Our target market would be travellers and tourists from the GCC, Asia, Europe and CIS. We also plan to target fast growing markets such as Eastern Europe, the Far East and Latin America, who visit the UAE for business or pleasure.”
He expresses confidence in both the group’s successful track record of operating hotel apartments as well as the Al Barsha property’s exceptional location as driving factors in his quest to achieve sales targets.
“Way back in 2006, we launched our first property, Rose Hotel Apartments behind Bur Juman shopping mall, a prime location in Bur Dubai. We have studios, one and two bedrooms to cater to the GCC market. In those days, the service accommodation sector had great demand so we entered the industry at the right time,” Razick recalls.
He continues: “In 2008, this was followed by our second one, the same hotel apartments concept, this time in Al Barsha, as we wanted to diversify and have more locations.”
Razick points out: “We’ve had a journey of about 10 years before we opened this hotel [Rose Park Hotel Al Barsha] in this prime location. As luck would have it, having the [Sharaf DG] metro [station] right at our doorstep has added value and made this even more of a more premium location.”
“Our sustainability in the market all these years gave us the confidence to have more products and add more properties to our portfolio,” he says, in rationalising the shift from hotel apartments to hotel operations. “We have been doing good, if not great, in hotel apartments. We wanted to diversify and gain experience in hotel operations, hence the third product is now a hotel. We want to go a step ahead and explore, what the hotel has. We want to target a larger audience from other market segments which we may have missed out in hotel apartments.”
| Advertisement |
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
