TDIC offloads properties in deal

Tourism Development and Investment Company has transferred three properties to its parent company in exchange for the converting of loans into government grants.

Tourism Development & Investment Company's Eastern Mangroves project in Abu Dhabi. Delores Johnson / The National

Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC), the developer of the St Regis resort on Saadiyat Island, has transferred three properties to its parent company in exchange for the converting of loans into government grants.

Revenues and losses increased. According to the group's accounts for last year filed with the London Stock Exchange yesterday, TDIC agreed to transfer the leisure and hotel properties, with a total book value of Dh2.1 billion, to its parent company Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (TCA) on January 1.

The properties include TDIC's Qasr Al Sarab hotel in the Liwa Desert. TDIC said it had agreed to transfer its 99 per cent stake in the company that owns the hotel to TCA at the start of the year and changed the name of the holding company to Tourism Investment Assets.

It also transferred ownership of the Desert Islands Resort and Spa on Sir Baniyas Island to TCA at the start of the year.

And it relinquished control of the Manarat Al Saadiyat visitors' centre and Fanr Restaurant on Saadiyat Island.

The company said that it had signed a management agreement with TCA in which TDIC would continue to manage the assets for an annual fee.

The news comes as TDIC announced a Dh2.1bn loss last year, almost double that of 2011. The company, established in 2006, recorded losses of Dh1.15bn in 2010, Dh551 million in 2009 and Dh368.6m in 2008.

More promisingly, revenues rose from Dh333.8m in 2011 to nearly Dh1.3bn last year, and the company ended the year with Dh2.4bn in cash on hand.

TDIC, which is developing Abu Dhabi's Louvre museum on Saadiyat Island, predicted that its current project pipeline would boost its balance sheet over the coming year.

"We're very optimistic about our performance in 2013," Ali Al Hammadi, the deputy managing director, said in a statement to the Emirates News Agency Wam.

"As we start to see our developments come to life, we believe that these newly opened properties, and others that are under way, will provide a strong uplift to the company's earnings in 2013."