Hotel investors look to Dubai for deals

Hotel investors looking for a deal are already descending on Dubai in the wake of the recent announcements from Dubai World.

CB Richard Ellis managing director Middle East Nicholas Maclean said investors from the Far East, Europe and the US were already looking into available options in the emirate.

“In fact just [yesterday] morning we took a call from an American hotel investor who wants to come in [to Dubai] as he has seen all the information relating to DP world and he is therefore making an unscheduled trip to Dubai in the anticipation that there might be more product in the marketplace than there had been previously,” he told HotelierMiddleEast.com.

Maclean noted however that investors were less keen to gamble on future developments and were looking at completed or nearly completed projects.

“If there is a completed product, which is income producing, in the way hotels are with an operator contract in place then that’s highly interesting if its completed,” he said.

“Also, if there is something unique about it without an operator, that’s also attractive because although there are a lot of brands exposed here and there are still one or two who want to find there way into the market place.”

Despite a lot of hotels in the region having been on the market throughout 2009, Maclean said the price and buyer and seller expectations had been a “little out of kilter”.

“People are much more wary now and perhaps have returned to what some should have done in the first place, looking at the inherent fundamentals of the property they were looking to invest in,” he explained.

“From people who understand hotels as products, there’s still plenty of interest in the marketplace and all of things such as the infrastructure, the ease of living, the central location and proximity to Abu Dhabi count in Dubai’s favour and that means long-term, medium-term and probably long-short-term, it’s a pretty good place to be.”