Middle Eastern hotelier Rotana is planning to open nine new hotels in the United Arab Emirates before 2020, the company said today.
Four of the properties will be in Abu Dhabi and the remaining five in Dubai, according to chief operating officer Guy Hutchinson.
These will add 3,598 keys to the company’s existing 9,584 room count in the UAE and increase its number of properties in the country to 44 by 2020.
“The new properties include five under the ‘Rotana Hotels & Resorts’ brand, three under the ‘Arjaan hotel apartments by Rotana’ brand, and one under Rotana’s lifestyle affordable hotel brand, ‘Centro by Rotana’," said Hutchinson.
The company will also open five new properties in Saudi Arabia this year and three in Qatar and one Kuwait by the end of 2018.
Hutchinson said the GCC remained the company’s largest source market and it would look to attract regional travellers to offset declining visitor numbers from Russia and China.
To date 37 per cent of Rotana’s room nights and 40 per cent of its room revenue comes from GCC travellers, with numbers increasing 8 per cent year-on-year.
“We are very optimistic about the outlook for the UAE and GCC tourism sector in 2016. Although the market environment continues to remain challenging, we see many positive trends and developments that could yet propel hospitality growth in the region in the year ahead – such as increased infrastructure spending by GCC governments, continuing rise in intra-regional travel percentage, and the rapid growth of MICE tourism,” he added.
Dubai saw 14.2 million overnight visitors last year and plans to attract 20 million by 2020. Abu Dhabi saw 3.8 million hotel stays.
Investments related to travel and tourism in the UAE totalled Dhs 21bn last year, or 6.2 per cent of overall investments, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.
This number is expected to increase by 9.7 per cent in 2016 and 5.1 per cent annually over the next 10 years to Dhs 37.8bn by 2024, according to the organisation
Rotana’s current portfolio stands at 100 properties across the Middle east, Africa, South Asia, and Eastern Europe.
