Abu Dhabi: Rotana, the hotel management company in the Middle East and Africa, announced on Wednesday the opening of its fifth Centro by Rotana property in the UAE, Centro Capital Centre in Abu Dhabi. Located in the Capital Centre development, the hotel is expected to cater to the capital’s Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre.

Rotana also announced that two more properties will be coming online at the Capital Centre district by the exhibition space. The second is Capital Centre Rotana, a four star 300-room hotel, set to open in 2014 and the third is Capital Centre Arjaan by Rotana, a four star 200-room hotel apartment property set to open in 2013.

Rotana is strongly pushing itself into the mid-tier market across the region, as it has announced its plans to open 25 Centro by Rotana hotels across the GCC, the Middle East and Africa by 2014.

“It’s our fastest growing brand and we expect that will continue down the line,” said Omer Kaddouri, Rotana’s Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer.

“We’ll be opening [Centro] hotels in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, in nearly all the major cities of the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]. Also in Lebanon. The Centro brand will be spread across the region,” Kaddouri said. “The mid-tier brand is very undersupplied in all of the areas that we operate in and that has been identified in the past two or three years, so with that need, the developers and the owners have decided to move into a mid-tier level and the Centro brand fits very nicely into that niche.”

Positive

When asked about business in Abu Dhabi, Kaddouri said that times are going to be tough over the next two or three years by the time the market settles, but that he’s very positive about business in the future. “It’s very important that we understand that Abu Dhabi is a destination in the building process. Abu Dhabi has big plans moving forward,” he said. “We’re building for the future and owners and investors are confident that building today will yield very good results for them in the near future.”

“This [Centro Capital Centre] hotel is two months old and it’s been averaging an occupancy of about 70 per cent so that’s not bad.”

First launched in 2006, the Centro by Rotana brand is a new innovative budget hotel brand that specifically caters to an underserved market in the Mena region. The Centro Capital Centre offers 414 modern rooms, six meetings rooms, a gym, a swimming pool and three food and beverage outlets.

Rotana currently runs two other Centro properties in Abu Dhabi: Centro Yas Island and Centro Al Manhal. It also runs Centro Barsha. The opening of the new Centro Capital Centre brings the company’s total room inventory to 44 properties and 11,800 rooms across all regions.