Rotana to operate 100 hotels by 2020

Dubai: Rotana Hotels and Resorts, UAE’s home-grown hospitality chain, will more than double its portfolio from 47 operating hotels to 100 by 2020, a senior official said.

About two-thirds of its hotels are located in the UAE.

The Abu Dhabi-based hotel operator has 45 more hotels in the pipeline that will open by 2016, doubling its room inventory to more than 25,000, up from the current 12,500.

“By the next Arabian Travel Market [ATM], we will have 53 hotels running,” Omar Kaddouri, Rotana’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, told Gulf News.

Among the new hotels, the company will open one in Karbala in Iraq, Al Ain, Jordan and two in Doha, Qatar.

“We have also signed up for a hotel in Turkey and one in Mauritania to expand our geographical reach in the wider Middle East,” he said.

Looking Eastwards

Most regional hotel operators are shying away from entering European markets due to the ongoing debt crisis. However, they are eyeing expansion opportunities in the East as economic growth continues in the emerging markets of Asia and Africa.

“South Asia is a major growth opportunity. We have already signed up for a hotel in New Delhi, India, which will open in due course. The project is currently under construction,” Kaddouri said.

“We are also negotiating for a hotel in Bangladesh — a growing tourism market,” he added.

The company, which has 11,000 employees, is expected to double its staff strength to manage the expansion. Kaddouri, however, said that finding the right skillsets is a major challenge. “We are also planning to develop our in-house hotel management training academy to continuously train our people — both new recruits and upgrade the skills of the existing manpower,” Kaddouri said. “It is very important because in the hospitality business where service quality is of utmost importance, you can’t get things wrong. It’s people who can make or break a business.”