Dubai: Mövenpick Hotels and Resorts, a Swiss hotel chain, is looking to enter the Kurdistan region of Iraq and open more hotels in the UAE, according to Soumitra Saha, the company’s vice president of finance and controlling for the Middle East and South Asia.
“We’re close to signing management agreements in the UAE and Arbil [in the Kurdistan region of Iraq],” Saha told Gulf News in a phone interview on Thursday.
Mövenpick is looking at striking deals for two hotels in Dubai by September and one in Arbil by July, and opening two hotels in Saudi Arabia (in Jeddah and Riyadh) by the end of the year, he said. He declined to say where the hotels in Dubai would be located. Mövenpick Jumeirah Lakes Towers and Mövenpick Hotel Apartments The Square in Mamzar opened in the emirate last year.
Properties
The company operates 27 hotels in the Middle East, of which six are in the UAE, and according to Saha, there are 12 properties in the regional pipeline, which are expected to open by 2018.
Mövenpick operates hotels in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar and Yemen, too.
The hotel chain is mulling business hotels in Dubai World Central (DWC), according to Saha. It is also considering a hotel signing in Ha’il, Saudi Arabia, and expanding further in Oman, Kuwait and Qatar, he said.
Meanwhile in India, the company signed a management agreement for a 167-room hotel in Kochi, which is expected to open at the end of the year, bringing the total number of hotels in India to three. The hotel chain currently operates Mövenpick Hotel Bangalore, which opened in 2011, and plans to open Mövenpick Dharamshala Resort & Spa, which is located in the Northern Indian Kangra Valley, in 2015.
