The hospitality arm of Abu Dhabi’s hypermarket owner Lulu Group expects to open its first hotel in Oman in October.
Twenty14 Holdings acquired a 50 per cent stake in the five-star Sheraton Oman Hotel in late 2014 for an undisclosed sum.
Built in 1985, the property closed from January 2007 for renovations. It is among the tallest buildings in Muscat at 14 storeys. Twenty14 Holdings will open the 230-room hotel in partnership with Muscat-based National Hotels Company, which is a part of Al Hashar Group.
“Sheraton Oman was originally built in the 1980s, so the hotel holds a special place in the hearts of local residents and travellers,” said Thomas van Opstal, the general manager of Sheraton Oman Hotel.
Oman expects to attract more than 2.5 million tourists this year, Salim Al Mamari, the director general of tourism promotion at Oman's ministry of tourism, told The National on the sidelines of the Arabian Travel Market in April. That would be up from 2.1 million tourists in 2014. About 10,000 hotel rooms are expected to come on stream in Oman by 2018. There are 315 hotels accounting for 16,691 rooms in the country.
Abu Dhabi-based Twenty14 Holdings has assets worth more than US$650 million across the UK, the Arabian Gulf and India, according to the company.
It opened its first five-star hotel in the UAE at Business Bay in Dubai last year that is managed by Steigenberger Hotel Group.
Twenty14 Holdings also struck a £110 million (Dh529m)deal with property developer Galliard Homes for a five-star hotel at 1-5 Great Scotland Yard. The 92,000 square feet Great Scotland Yard Hotel is expected to open early next year.
It owns Fairfield by Marriott in Kochi, and Courtyard by Marriott in Bengaluru.
The group also wants to bring new food and beverage brands to Dubai.
It expects to open Paulaner Biergarten, an outdoor venue serving German cuisine, Backyard, an urban street food concept, and Cuisinero Uno, a tapas restaurant, at the Steigenberger Hotel.
Currently the property has four restaurants and cafes.
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Abdul Jabar Qahraman was meeting supporters in his campaign office in the southern Afghan province of Helmand when a bomb hidden under a sofa exploded on Wednesday.
The blast in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah killed the Afghan election candidate and at least another three people, Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak told reporters. Another three were wounded, while three suspects were detained, he said.
The Taliban – which controls much of Helmand and has vowed to disrupt the October 20 parliamentary elections – claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mr Qahraman was at least the 10th candidate killed so far during the campaign season, and the second from Lashkar Gah this month. Another candidate, Saleh Mohammad Asikzai, was among eight people killed in a suicide attack last week. Most of the slain candidates were murdered in targeted assassinations, including Avtar Singh Khalsa, the first Afghan Sikh to run for the lower house of the parliament.
The same week the Taliban warned candidates to withdraw from the elections. On Wednesday the group issued fresh warnings, calling on educational workers to stop schools from being used as polling centres.
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