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29 March 2024

Jumeirah in talks to launch new brand

Venu Hotels, the new lifestyle hotel brand from the Jumeirah Group, is slated for launch later in the year. (SUPPLIED)

Published
By Shweta Jain

Luxury hospitality company Jumeirah plans to launch a new brand of hotels – venu Hotels – later this year, the company revealed yesterday. Emirates Business had reported in August last year that Jumeirah was mulling the prospects of launching a new lifestyle hotel brand.

Venu Hotels is currently in advanced stages of negotiation with developers across the Middle East, Northern Africa, Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific. The locations for the first set of venu hotels will be confirmed later this year, Jumeirah Group said in a statement.

While the group did not divulge any further details with regard to the specific market segment the new brand is targeted at, Gerald Lawless, Executive Chairman of Jumeirah Group, told this newspaper earlier that if the group did launch the new brand, it "would still do it in the luxury, five-star segment but more in the lifestyle, contemporary styled brand".

"Venu Hotels will, when launched, fulfil a clear market need and one that is highly complementary to the Jumeirah Hotels and Resorts brand," he said in a statement yesterday.

Also, according to recent media reports, Jumeirah Group is contemplating taking the new hotel brand to India by the end of this year, making its first foray in the Indian market. Further discussions with developers and investors are due to take place next week in the course of the two-day Arabian Hotel Investment Conference in Dubai.

Jumeirah Group expects to launch at least 10 new hotels within the next 18 months, including Jumeirah Frankfurt, Jumeirah Messilah Beach in Kuwait, two hotels in the Maldives, Jumeirah Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi and properties in Al Ain and Dubai in the UAE, Shanghai and others, that will be confirmed in the coming months.

The group, meanwhile, achieved an average occupancy rate of 92.5 per cent in April for its Dubai hotel properties, and an average of 89 per cent occupancy rate in February and March.

Further providing an update on its growth strategy, the group said it has 32 management agreements in place to run hotels in key locations across the world, re-affirming its growth strategy of having 60 hotels signed up by 2012. Of this, the company is confident of having 30 hotels open in 2013.

Elsewhere in the world, in New York, Jumeirah Essex House secured average occupancy rate of 85 per cent during April, the company said, adding that Jumeirah Group's London properties – Jumeirah Carlton Towers and Jumeirah Lowndes Hotel – showed a similar strength in performance.

Lawless was, meanwhile, quoted by Bloomberg on Tuesday as saying that the company is looking for management contracts in Latin America.

The Jumeirah Group currently manages 11 hotels for investors, eight in Dubai, including the Burj Al Arab, and the Carlton Tower in London and Essex House in New York.