Jumeirah Group, which runs Dubai's landmark Burj Al Arab Hotel, says the hotels it expects to manage in Dubailand's Boulevard Bawadi have been delayed because the project itself has been postponed. Another hotel that Jumeirah expected to manage as part of the planned Dh7 billion (US$1.9bn) Aqua Dunya theme park development, also in Dubailand, had been cancelled by its developer, said Paul Macpherson, the chief development officer of Jumeirah Group.
"Bawadi has been delayed and we had a few projects in there, so they have been stalled," Mr Macpherson said. "In some form or another there will be hotels out there, because Dubailand is going to carry on, in a longer time frame, which will certainly be more manageable than it was." Dubai's hotels have been hit hard by a decline in global demand for travel, which has been exacerbated by an increase in the number of hotels in the emirate. This has forced hotels to cut rates in an effort to boost occupancy levels, which dropped to 68 per cent in the year to August compared with 80 per cent in the same period last year.
On its website, Bawadi said it had "the largest cluster of hotels in the world", along with amusement centres, shopping malls, theatres and restaurants. According to Bawadi's masterplan, the 10km-long boulevard in Dubailand, a massive entertainment centre under development just outside Dubai city, would have 51 hotels and more than 60,000 rooms. The centrepiece, Asia-Asia, alone would have 6,500 rooms.
Billed as "the Disneyland of the Middle East", it has been planned to spread over 2.7 hectares. It was announced in 2003, and is planned to serve 2.5 million people including tourists, workers and residents, according to the Dubailand website. Other attractions include the Tiger Woods golf development and the Universal Studios theme park. It also expects 40,000 visitors a day. The project is a major part of Dubai's plans to attract 15 million visitors a year to the emirate by 2015.
But almost six years on, and while parts of phase one of Dubailand are ready, progress on the rest of the development, which is scheduled to be delivered in phases up to 2020, has been slow. Mr Macpherson said some of the projects Jumeirah had been asked to look at in the past in Dubai "didn't make sense". "Now we're back to a more rational arena," he said. Jumeirah was still looking at other opportunities in Dubai and the group was also studying proposals for more than 40 hotels in the Middle East, he said.
"I think now Dubai has found the bottom, and it's great for us, but - if you're in a poor location with a poor hotel, you're not going to do well," Mr Macpherson said. "Five years ago, you would have been fine." He said Jumeirah saw a drop in occupancy levels at the beginning of this year, but efforts in conjunction with the Dubai Government and Emirates Airline had helped to push occupancies back up above 90 per cent for its beach hotels.
However, he said there were more challenges for Emirates Towers. "We have such a solid foundation in Dubai that it's really about branching out of Dubai and going global." Jumeirah Group plans to have 60 hotels open or under development globally by 2012. rbundhun@thenational.ae
