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28 March 2024

Expo 2020 to fuel demand for hotel rooms

Published
By Bindu Suresh Rai

Hyatt International says Dubai is a good fit for their select service brand hotels, Hyatt Place and House, with some new developments ‘possibly’ announced in the near future.

 

Speaking to Emirates 24|7 at the ongoing Arabian Travel Market, Tareq Daoud, Regional VP, Global Sales, Middle East for Hyatt International said: “We have three major Hyatt brands already having a significant presence in the UAE. A select service brand would be an interesting mix.

“We will be seeing some announcements soon, specifically for Dubai. Hopefully, we can confirm this, but we are looking into select services for this market, for Hyatt Place or House.”

Quizzed whether the brand was looking for further hotel development in other emirates and Daoud said: “Hyatt is always interested in any opportunity that makes value sense. We are always looking at Dubai and Abu Dhabi for growth, but that doesn’t mean we rule out other emirates either.”

Daoud disagreed that the hotel industry is reaching a saturation point with earlier Dubai Trade Commerce and Marketing confirming that 15,000 additional hotel rooms are in the pipeline for 2016.

“If Dubai wins the Expo 2020 bid then any developer in the hospitality industry will look at the emirate due to the influx we will see for the period, as will Hyatt,” he said. “They announced earlier this week that Dubai expects 20 million visitors by 2020, which seems that we would need an additional 75-90,000 rooms to target those numbers.”

Daoud said the group was not just bullish on the UAE, but also very keen on the GCC region at large, with Hyatt International announcing a major expansion drive within the Saudi Arabian market.

The US-based hotel chain has ambitious plans to open three hotels in Makkah, with a 600-room Hyatt Regency to open in 2014.

Following this will be the opening of the Hyatt House and Place properties.

“Focus on inbound tourism is for business and religious reasons in Saudi Arabia so it made sense to open our hotel with the Hyatt Regency Makkah,” he said.

“The next on the plan with be the Hyatt Regency Olaya, which should also open within a year’s time, which will be a 269-room property,” he added.

This will be followed by a Park Hyatt in Riyadh Following by 2015.

In Jeddah, where Hyatt currently runs one property, it has signed two other projects that are scheduled to open in 2015 to 2016 – the Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency.