DEAD SEA, JORDAN // Jumeirah Group is planning a global push that involves more than 70 new projects round the world, its chief executive said.
Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the Dead Sea in Jordan, Gerald Lawless said the strategy of the Dubai hotels and resorts chain was to enhance its position as a global brand in the upmarket hotels business.
“The market for global tourism will continue to grow, especially in the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. We’re involved in 62 new projects in those regions, backing up the strategy with action,” he said.
In particular, he said, global tourism operators should exploit the rise of the Chinese tourism industry. The potential travel market has been swelled by 100 million new Chinese tourists in recent years. Jumeirah has eight developments in China, including a new hotel planned in Nanjing.
Chinese visitor numbers to Dubai are predicted to surge 98 per cent in the 10 years through 2023 to 545,000, according to a March report from Oxford Economics and InterContinental Hotels Group.
Jumeirah has also prioritised expansion in the Middle East. Mr Lawless said he was in advanced talks with authorities and potential partners in Saudi Arabia, which Jumeirah has long considered to be the next big market in the region.
“We’ve been very careful about how we approach Saudi Arabia, but we’re close. The next few months should see some news,” he said.
Jumeirah is also involved in two hotel projects in Aqaba in Jordan.
Mr Lawless, who is also vice-chairman of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), repeated his call for a common electronic visa system valid around the world, similar to the American “trusted traveller” system.
He also weighed into the row between Arabian Gulf airlines and some American aviation lobbyists over “open skies” flying rights to US cities.
“I don’t see why flying rights should be restricted by government protocols,” he said. “There is no such thing as ‘hotel rights’. If I open a hotel in China I don’t have to offer a Chinese company the right to open a hotel in Dubai.”
“The hotel industry … is very much in favour of as much freedom as possible in flying rights,” he added. “It makes perfect business sense. Why would hoteliers want to take steps to reduce the number of tourists who can visit a city or country? It was discussed at the recent WTTC annual meeting in Madrid and all the big hotel chains were strongly in favour of the Gulf carriers’ position.”
fkane@thenational.ae
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
EMIRATES'S REVISED A350 DEPLOYMENT SCHEDULE
Edinburgh: November 4 (unchanged)
Bahrain: November 15 (from September 15); second daily service from January 1
Kuwait: November 15 (from September 16)
Mumbai: January 1 (from October 27)
Ahmedabad: January 1 (from October 27)
Colombo: January 2 (from January 1)
Muscat: March 1 (from December 1)
Lyon: March 1 (from December 1)
Bologna: March 1 (from December 1)
Source: Emirates
