The latest luxury hotel to open in Dubai is ripping out shower stalls to replace them with baths, while one of its luxurious neighbours has to install hundreds of bidets in the quest for a five-star rating. Rotana launched its luxury Amwaj Rotana Jumeirah Beach Dubai hotel yesterday but said it had to replace all the showers with baths to meet the rigid classification standards for a five-star rating.
"A three-star hotel can have 50 per cent showers and 50 per cent bathtubs," said Omer Kaddouri, the chief operating officer of Rotana. "Four star and five star have to have 100 per cent bathtubs. We are going to be complying to that within an agreed period of time. "Abu Dhabi and Dubai are particularly strict. "This hotel was built with showers for whatever reason and the showers are not acceptable so we have to change them."
The hotel has to put baths in about 280 of the 301 rooms. The suites already have baths. "It's an extra cost," said Mr Kaddouri. "It's not prohibitive. I think by the end of the year everything should be in place. We have to respect the criteria." The nearby Sofitel Dubai Jumeirah Beach, which opened this year, has had similar problems. "We have had some problems due to the bidets," said Gilles Longuet, the manager of the hotel, which will need to have bidets installed in each of its 438 rooms to get the coveted five-star rating.
"The changes have been taking place. We are expecting the ranking in a couple of days," Mr Longuet said. Mr Kaddouri believes the classification systems in Dubai and Abu Dhabi need to be more flexible. "I just think we need to start looking a little bit further afield in terms of the new trends that are happening in the world today, vis-a-vis some of the criteria we have," he said. "We don't all have to be exactly the same.
"There are many hotels in the world today where there are only showers and they are classified as four and five-star hotels, so they're particularly strict here." Mr Kaddouri said the hotel was still able to market itself as a five-star property, although under the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) hotel rating system the luxury property would have achieved only two stars. "We just have to give letters of assurances that we're going to be doing the following," he said. "The DTCM are very flexible and very assisting because they want us to have hotels open. They want tourists to be coming from around the world."
The DTCM last month said five-star hotels in Dubai were to be placed in three sub-categories - platinum, gold and silver - under a classification system set to launch at the end of the year. Rotana, based in Abu Dhabi, is one of the largest operators in the UAE, managing 16 properties with a total of 4,045 rooms in Dubai and the Northern Emirates. Rotana's new hotel, which has launched with opening rates of Dh599 (US$163), is owned by the International Hotel Investment Company, based in Abu Dhabi.
rbundhun@thenational.ae
