Jumeirah Group plans to open a 200-room, five-star hotel as part of a US$1 billion project in Dubai’s Business Bay.
It will operate the hotel at the mixed-use tower owned by the Dubai-based real estate investment company RP Global.
Expected to open in time for the Dubai Expo in 2020, the Jumeirah Business Bay will also include 350 serviced apartments and 290 residences managed by the group.
The hotel will be located behind the Business Bay Metro station and has been designed by the engineering firm Atkins Global, which also designed Jumeirah’s Burj Al Arab.
Jumeirah does not own the majority of the hotels it operates in the UAE and overseas.
“That is our model for international expansion,” said Piers Schreiber, a spokesman for the group. “By 2020, we expect to have 40 hotels open.”
Jumeirah Group, which operates 23 hotels in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, has 25 Jumeirah and Venu properties in the pipeline.
It has eight properties under development in China and two in Mumbai and Goa, India, which are expected to come on stream from 2017 onwards.
The RP Group of Companies, the holding company of RP Global, said the financing for the mixed-use tower would come from its own resources.
In Dubai, hotels are facing a slowdown in average daily room rates as the city’s room inventory grows.
“Average daily room rate in the market has been pressured as year-to-date supply growth has outpaced demand,” STR Global said last week.
The occupancy rate in the city touched 57.8 per cent in July, up by 24.7 per cent year-on-year, and revenue per available room rose 21.9 per cent to Dh346.76 in July, according to the latest data available from STR Global. Room rates kept sliding that month, falling 2.2 per cent year on year to below Dh600.
UAE hotels as a whole reported occupancy rates of 57.6 per cent, a rise of 24 per cent, and a 23.6 per cent increase in revenue per available room to Dh307.46. The average daily room rate was down 0.4 per cent to Dh533.88.
Combined room rates for June and July, the Ramadan months, fell 4.5 per cent to Dh523.8 as revenue per available room dropped 3.2 per cent to Dh310.60, the research company said last week.
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