Dubai: With local hotel brands expanding, the Arabian Travel Market (ATM), a regional travel and tourism exhibition, expects strong participation from them this year.
To cope with the demand, ATM 2014 will have additional space this year. It will cover five halls in Dubai World Trade Centre and all of the Shaikh Saeed halls, increasing the size of the show to 23,500 square metres — a 5.8 per cent increase over last year, according to a statement by Reed Travel Exhibitions, the organiser of ATM 2014, which will be held between May 5 and 8.
The region’s hotel brands include Jumeirah, Rotana, Hospitality Management Holdings, Address, TI’ME and JA. Some of these brands, such as Jumeirah, are not just expanding regionally but internationally. Jumeirah expects to open hotels in China and Indonesia.
International hotel management companies such as Hilton, IHC, Starwood, Hyatt, Accor and Marriott operate 22 per cent of the 802 regional hotel stock, data by Reed Travel Exhibitions showed.
There are 498 hotels with 120,119 rooms in the Middle East and Africa hotel development pipeline, according to the STR Global Construction Pipeline report for December.
Dubai led regional markets with 10,970 rooms under construction, followed by Makkah (6,927 rooms), Riyadh (5,804 rooms), Doha (4,944 rooms), Abu Dhabi (3,036 rooms) and Jeddah (2,569 rooms), the STR Global report showed.
