Hoteliers confident of luxury market recovery

The region’s top-end hotels say they are confident the luxury travel market will bounce back towards the end of the year.

They say sales from this sector – from both a leisure and business perspective - have been very sluggish over the past 12 months but promotions and value-for-money options are enticing them back.

“The luxury segment almost disappeared in the last 12 months,” said InterContinental Hotels Group Dubai Festival City director of sales and marketing Christian Pertl.

“Top management from multi-nationals cannot afford to be seen within luxurious environments anymore and there has been a lot of pressure on hotels to lower rates, but it’s all about [offering] smart deals.

He said IHG DFC expected 2010 to “remain a challenge”, although the property did see “positive signs of recovery”, especially from the GCC and Indian markets.

“The luxury market is still alive, people are willing to pay; they just want more value for their money,” Pertl added.

Shangri-La Hotel, Qaryat Al Beri, Abu Dhabi general manager, Adrian Rudin, said: “Generally I think the premium traveller will still travel; there is a concern about spending, but for those who are seasoned travellers, this [fear] is less so.”

He predicted that there would be a pick up in Middle East business in Q3 and that the international luxury travel market would “bounce back” by the end of the year.

Both Rudin and Pertl were speaking to Hotelier after attending the International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) in Cannes in December – a show they claimed was very effective for securing business.

The pair also revealed identical goals at ILTM – to secure more business from the European and Russian markets.

Lore Koenig, director of sales and marketing at The Chedi, Muscat, attended ILTM for the fourth time and said the mood of luxury buyers was “very positive”.

Middle East buyer Nick Sheppard, manager, non-air product at Dnata, said he had a “mixed response” from the hoteliers with whom he met at the show.

“Some hotels were eager to offer very keen pricing, in particular for Q1 and Q2, while others were indicating relatively high occupancies at the beginning of the year and were more interested in targeting periods later in the year,” he said.