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Marc Dardenne
CEO, Emaar Hospitality Group LLC
CEO, The Address Hotels + Resorts
CEO, Armani Hotels + Resorts
His role in the opening of the world’s first Armani Hotel in the iconic Burj Khalifa, Dubai, brings Marc Dardenne one step nearer to the top spot in the Hotelier Middle East Power 50 2010.
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Ranked third last year, when he was recognised for developing a new home-grown luxury lifestyle brand, The Address Hotel + Resorts, Dardenne continues to drive growth in the company when many other new chains have deferred development.
Over the past 12 months, The Address has opened two more properties — The Address Dubai Mall and The Address Dubai Marina — and rebranded The Address Montgomerie in Dubai. The brand’s hotel cluster in Downtown Dubai has reported improved business in 2010, with The Palace — the Old Town claiming a 25-30% growth in occupancy on last year.
And the Downtown domination by Emaar Hospitality Group was cemented with the opening of Armani Hotel Dubai at the end of April, a few months later than expected, but well worth the wait.
Thanks to the smart collaboration between Giorgio Armani and parent company Emaar Properties, Emaar Hospitality has shown that Dubai hotels do not have to be gold and glitzy but rather stylish and sophisticated.
The hotel is now the model for up to 10 other Armani properties worldwide, the next being in Milan, and also sets the standard for what a partnership with a global fashion icon can achieve. Being in charge of the flagship Armani Hotel has once again put Emaar Hospitality at the forefront of the hotel industry in Dubai, and helped reaffirm the emirate’s worthy position on the international hotel stage.
But how does Dardenne, who was voted CEO of the Year, Hospitality and Tourism, in the 2009 CEO Middle East Awards, plan to top such stellar achievements over the next year? His focus is on further establishing The Address Hotels + Resorts brand — already a favourite among GCC nationals — and expanding its reach worldwide.
His plans are ambitious — in interviews with Hotelier this year, Dardenne said that the ultimate target was to be one of the world’s leading hotel chains within the next 10 years, with the “pipeline for global expansion clearly in its sights”.
“The first two hotels that will open in 2012 will be the France project in the Languedoc and Marrakech,” Dardenne said at the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference 2010. “We are also just about to sign a location in Budapest and are finalising another deal in Istanbul.
“We have about another 10 potential opportunities in the Middle East region and in north Africa,” added Dardenne. “Our next move is to look at more European based hotels and I’m also going to see opportunities in Asia.”
The plan has always been to take the brand global, he said, using both strategic and opportunistic approaches to do it.
“We are looking at potentially London as a strategic location, where we would probably partner up with the developer and invest equity, otherwise it’s fairly opportunistic in terms of our development, since we really want to have an asset light strategy of management contracts,” explained Dardenne.
However, The Address has certainly not ruled out having further properties in Dubai, with Dardenne revealing to Hotelier that a beach resort on The Palm, Jumeirah was also on his wishlist.
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