Jumeirah Group chief outlines new hotel venture

Dubai government-owned hotel operator Jumeirah Group plans to open the first hotel under its new Venu brand within the next twelve months, the hotelier’s executive chairman told Arabian Business this week.

“I would say that within twelve months we will have a Venu in operation,” Gerard Lawless, executive chairman of Jumeirah Group, said during an interview at the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference in Dubai.

Lawless said the hotelier, which operates the Burj Al Arab, Jumeirah Beach Hotel and the Madinat Jumeirah and registered an average occupancy rate of 92.5 percent in April, plans to open ten new hotels in the next eighteen months and he is confident that there is room for another brand from the group.

“We just see that there is a market for another brand from Jumeirah and certainly with the Venu brand some of the specifications, like the room size, we will specify 36 to 38 square metres, while in Jumeirah we will say 50 square metres,” he added.

Initially, the hotels under the Venu brand will be properties that the company has taken over, are not yet open and are close to be completed.

“We are in the final discussion stages with a number of properties… [and] we don’t have conversion of any existing property in mind at this stage. All Jumeirah hotels will remain Jumeirah for the foreseeable future and we have no plan to change of them to Venu right now,” said Lawless.

The average size of Venu hotels will be up to about 250 rooms, he added. In term of locations, Lawless said the Venu hotels will be city centre based and resort based and that Jumeirah has “some serious discussions going on at the moment for resorts under the Venu label.”

At least one of the Venu hotels will be in Dubai and he is confident that the hotel sector in the emirate has not reached saturation point and can sustain even more hotels.

“I am cautiously optimistic that we do have space in Dubai. I think projects that have a good business plan will get built. Jumeirah is a strong company in Dubai and we can make our hotels a success.

“There are 42 million people coming through the airport every year and the number of arrivals in hotels is 7.2 million, so there is a big market out there that we can persuade to get off the aircraft, even for a few days. I think we are ok and I think we can take more hotels and we can fill them,” he said enthusiastically.