Dubai: Swiss hotel chain Mövenpick Hotels and Resorts is planning to open a new hotel apartments complex in Downtown Dubai, according to a top company executive.

The 246-room property, called Mövenpick Hotel Apartments Downtown Dubai, will offer units ranging from 36 square metres for studio apartments and 104 square metres for two-bedroom apartments.

The property is expected to be operational in 2017, Andreas Mattmuller, the company’s chief operating officer for the Middle East and Asia, told Gulf News in an interview. El Housein Limited is the property’s owner. “Construction permits [for the new property] have already been issued,” he said.

The hotel chain operates 27 hotels in the Middle East, of which six are in Dubai. Mövenpick Jumeirah Lakes Towers and Mövenpick Hotel Apartments The Square in Mamzar opened in the emirate last year.  Occupancy rates at those hotels have reached 83 per cent.

Mövenpick  plans to have “40-45 hotels in the Middle East in the next five years,” Mattmuller said.

In Dubai, Mövenpick is mulling hotel apartments and business hotels in Dubai World Central, and hotels in Business Bay and on Shaikh Zayed Road. Also, it plans to revive three projects in Abu Dhabi (Al Reem Island, Yas Island and Al Raha Beach), which it signed management agreements for in 2007 and 2008, and put on hold due to the 2008 financial crisis. Those properties are expected to open in two and a half years.

Dubai has attracted international hotel chains in recent years and space in prime areas, such as Palm Jumeirah, is tight.

Prime area

Mattmuller said that Mövenpick has looked at opening hotels in that prime area.

“We could do a great job on the Palm because we operate many resort hotels. But [the plot that] we got offered was actually a little bit too small,” he said.

Meanwhile in the region, the hotel company plans to open a hotel in Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia during the first quarter of 2015, bringing the total number of hotels in the country to 11. It is also looking for opportunities in Yanbu and Jubail.

The company also expects to open a hotel in Arbil in two and a half years. “With the current situation [there], everything at the moment is on hold,” Matmuller said. In the next 12 months, Mövenpick plans to open hotels in Djerba, Tunisia and Marrakesh, Morocco.