Hotel brands head to RAK’s ‘outperforming’ tourism market

New Hilton Garden Inn to target mid-market customers while Mövenpick Hotels signs deal to manage 550-key Al Marjan Island resort.

Mövenpick will have its first property in Ras Al Khaimah at Al Marjan Island, to open in 2019. Courtesy Mövenpick Hotels

Ras Al Khaimah’s hotel’s market is to gain another couple of brands with a Hilton Garden Inn and a Mövenpick resort due to open.

Rak Hospitality Holding announced in the second quarter of this year that it is to open a Hilton Garden Inn, which will be its first mid-market hotel in the northern emirate.

The former Hilton Ras Al Khaimah, which opened in 2001 and closed last year, is to make way for the Garden Inn brand. It will have 240 guest rooms, a conference and events facility, a restaurant, lounge and bar area and a pool deck.

Mahmoud Mokhtar, the country manager for Hilton Worldwide, said that it had been “one of the first international groups to spot the potential of this emirate”.

“Now we’re continuing to move ahead of the pack by evolving our portfolio to satisfy the destination’s growing demand for mid-market accommodation.”

Meanwhile, Swiss operator Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts has finalised a deal to operate its first property in Ras Al Khaimah – a 550-key resort hotel. It will open in 2019 at Al Marjan Island – a US$1.8 billion (Dh6.6bn) man-made cluster of coral-shaped islands.

Ras Al Khaimah’s hospitality market is outperforming the rest of the UAE market, according to a recently published study by CBRE, citing occupancy growth of 13.6 per cent during the first nine months of this year. Average occupancy rates during that period increased to 70.5 per cent, up from 62.1 per cent in the prior year. Revenue per average room increased by 8.5 per cent, despite a drop in average daily rates of 4.5 per cent.

Visitor numbers were also up by 10 per cent year-on-year to 613,000 in the year to September, which CBRE Middle East's UAE head of research and consulting, Mat Green, attributed to "the concerted efforts of RAKTDA (RAK's tourism authority) and quasi-government developers in raising the emirate's profile within international markets". Visitor numbers for the emirate are expected to reach 820,000 this year and RAKTDA is targeting one million visitors per year by the end of 2018 and between 2.5 million and 2.9 million a year by the end of 2025. It has been targeting tourists from source markets in Europe – particularly from Germany and Russia.

Ras Al Khaimah has about 5,000 hotel rooms – 46 per cent of which are in luxury, five-star properties and 41 per cent in four-star, with the remaining 13 per cent in budget two- and three-star properties. More than 1,000 new hotel rooms will added by the end of 2018.

Mr Green said the “relatively small” number of new hotels planned before 2019 and the emirate’s rising visitor numbers meant returns for investors are likely to remain positive in the near term.

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