As we strap ourselves in for the roller-coaster ride that is 2018, we are obviously thinking about trends, predictions, and looking at pipeline data.

Based on a number of comments from hoteliers and consultants through the last year, we know that there is a steady influx of supply coming into the market. When talking about new build properties, a great place to look is at STR’s Middle East/Africa pipeline data for October 2017, which shows that the Middle East region reported 166,774 rooms in 580 hotel projects  are ‘under contract’ in the Middle East — this includes projects in the ‘in construction’, ‘final planning’ and ‘planning’ stages but does not include projects in the unconfirmed stage.

With 99,790 rooms in 314 projects in construction phase, an 18.1% increase in year-over-year comparisons, there are some key markets that show more than 4,000 rooms in construction: Dubai, UAE (29,226 rooms in 95 projects); Makkah, Saudi Arabia (23,791 rooms in 18 projects); Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (6,349 rooms in 29 projects); and Abu Dhabi, UAE (4,124 rooms in 12 projects).

Analysts at Lodging Econometrics released its Construction Pipeline Trend Report in September 2017, which showed that the top hotel companies in the Middle East’s construction pipeline are: Marriott International with 94 projects/22,641 rooms; Hilton with 81 projects/22,456 rooms; and AccorHotels with 79 projects/24,491 rooms.

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In addition to this, we have announcements sent to us week on week about new signings — a sure indicator of activity on the development side. Why then, are operators not keen to commit to when these hotels are actually opening?

Hotelier Middle East has been running its annual pipeline report for many years now and I have been involved in this for its last four iterations. However, my team and I faced more resistance than we have had before when it comes to receiving confirmed information for these data sets. Usually, by this time, we would receive the most updated version of the operator’s pipeline which we then cross-check against our own existing data. However, at the time of going to print, we had one operator tell us they preferred we use old data because its own wouldn’t be ready until the end of January 2018, another just refusing to give us anything past 2018 even though we know what has been signed for past that date, and yet another just not receiving sign-offs from its construction and development teams. Then we had operators who gave us the list, but no opening dates — which was better than nothing!

So what has changed this year? We know there are always inevitable delays in construction here (there are a number of hotels which have been stuck in construction or fit-out phases for longer than expected), or cashflow slowing down — but surely operators, and owners, know when they are targeting openings, or at the very least, know which hotels they have on their list?

I am, of course, aware that organisations are extremely cautious about what they promise nowadays. However, it’s a worrying trend when multiple operators are not certain of when their properties are going live.

Good luck to everyone working on pre-openings for a 2018 launch — I look forward to seeing them come to life!