Find out what the region’s suppliers really think of your hotel in the first-ever Hotelier Middle East Supplier Survey
The Hotelier Middle East Supplier Survey is the first-ever report into the region’s hotel industry from the hotel suppliers perspective.
Carried out via HotelierMiddleEast.com and by email to a supplier database, the survey targeted companies supplying a vast range of hotel needs – from food and beverage (F&B) to design to technology.
In total, 66 respondents completed the survey during the month of February, 2010.
Just over half (51.4%) of respondents supplied products or services in the F&B, kitchen equipment and restaurant equipment sectors.
Of the rest, 19.6% supplied the recreation, pools and spa sectors; 10% were involved in architecture, design and interior fit-out; and 9.1% supplied the housekeeping department.
Each company was allowed to select up to three sectors and many said they offered a range of products, such as soft furnishings and amenities, lighting and design, or even reservations and laundry.
The majority of the respondents (63.6%) said their business was located in the UAE. There were also respondents with companies based in Germany (four), Lebanon (two), UK (four), US (three), Western Europe (two) and one each in Italy, Spain, France and Turkey, plus one ‘other’ location.
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All of the 66 suppliers said they did business with hotels in the Middle East and North Africa region.
As expected, the vast majority (92.4%) did business in the UAE. The most popular countries for doing business after the UAE were Qatar, Oman, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Some suppliers said they had secured business in countries beyond the GCC, such as Jordan (45.5%), Egypt (43.9%) and Lebanon (39.4%).
Emerging markets appeared to be Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Tunisia and Yemen, with between 15% and 22% of respondents saying that they did business in these countries.
And almost two thirds of the sample (63.3%) said that more than 50% of their business came from hotels.
For 12.1% of respondents, 100% of their business was in partnership with the hotel sector.
With the sample analysed, read on to find out what the suppliers had to say about their financial performance, redundancies and recruitment, industry trends, business challenges — and your hotel company.
FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE
In order to assess the impact of the economic downturn on companies’ financial performance, Hotelier asked suppliers to reveal their business’ annual turnover and net profit for both 2008 and 2009 within selected brackets.
More than half of the sample answered the questions regarding turnover (40 respondents) and half (33 respondents) answered the questions regarding profit.
The results were positive; 84.4% of suppliers reported making a profit in 2008 and 87.8% of respondents made a profit in 2009.
The median profit in both years was in the bracket US $1 million to $5 million.
Only one company reported a loss in 2008 and another company reported a loss in 2009.
Three companies broke even in each of 2008 and 2009.
In 2010, more than three quarters of (77.4% of 53) respondents expect annual turnover to exceed their 2009 turnover and the same number expect net profit to go up as well. However, 7.5% predict less net profit in 2010 than in 2009.
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