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Gerald Lawless
Executive chairman, Jumeirah Group
No ranking of the Middle East’s top hoteliers would be complete without Jumeirah Group’s executive chairman Gerald Lawless. While some hotels in Jumeirah’s pipeline may be slow in coming to fruition – the Al Fattan resort on the Palm and the Healthcare City hotels for example – two recent takeovers have reaffirmed Jumeirah’s position as Dubai’s leader in luxury.
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In March, Jumeirah took over operations of The Meydan hotel ahead of its opening in time for the Dubai World Cup, hailed as a great success. An LOU with Meydan for the management of the property was announced in June and since then, the hotel has been promoted alongside Jumeirah favourites Burj Al Arab and Bab Al Shams.
And in August, Hotelier Middle East exclusively revealed that the Zabeel Saray hotel on the Palm Jumeirah would be managed by Jumeirah Group as opposed to being managed by original operator Rixos Hotels (although Jumeirah has not yet made a statement on this matter). The hotel is believed to be opening on October 1.
Meanwhile, Jumeirah Group reported high occupancies at its existing Dubai beachfront properties earlier this year, with Jumeirah Beach Hotel and Madinat Jumeirah registering occupancies of 92.5% during April 2010.
Home-grown brand Jumeirah is also continuing to expand its influence outside of Dubai, with more than 32 management agreements in place to run hotels in a variety of key locations across the world.
As of May this year, the company expected to open 10 hotels in the next 18 months, reaffirming its strategy of having 30 hotels open by 2013 and 60 hotels signed up.
Forthcoming openings in the region are Messilah Beach in Kuwait and Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi by the end of 2011, while the group has recently signed its first hotel in Egypt.
The big announcement from Lawless this year, however, was the launch of a new brand, Venu Hotels, which will see Jumeirah explore the “contemporary lifestyle” sector.
The first Venu has been signed for Shanghai, with many others expected to follow.
Lawless commented: “It opens up to new investors and new locations. Jumeirah Stay Different, which is our name brand at the very top end of the scale, will always find itself in key letterhead cities as we like to call them and in key resorts worldwide, whereas there are many other cities that we could take an operation and brand like Venu into that we may be a bit slower or reluctant to take Jumeirah into because room rates might be higher and so on.
“We have looked at this and we certainly feel that there are some really interesting cities that in the first wave you wouldn’t take Jumeirah into, but that you could take Venu. And then there are also cities in which we already have Jumeirah but we could have Venu Hotels there as well.”
And as well as growing the company, Lawless has also had to defend it against reports that parent company Dubai Holding was considering selling the hotel arm. Back in May, he told Arabian Business that the hotel operator was “certainly not” for sale and that the hospitality company was “an integral part of Dubai Holding”.
And if that wasn’t enough, Lawless has put his 23 years of industry experience to good use in his additional roles as a member of the executive committee of the World Travel and Tourism Council, a fellow member of the Institute of Hospitality and a member of the board of directors of DIFX.
He is also on the board of directors of Tatweer, a member of the Dubai Holding Executive Committee and a member of board of ENDP, as well as chairman on the board of governors of The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management.
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