Intercontinental sees occupancy rates recovering

Dubai: Conference tourism and executive travel is picking up again after a period of uncertainty during the last months, according to Christian Pertl, sales and marketing director of Intercontinental Dubai Festival City.

The hotel complex, comprising the five-star Intercontinental Hotel, Crown Plaza and Intercontinental Residence Suites with 1,026 rooms and 4,000 square metres of conference space altogether, is experiencing the modest sales period of the last months bottoming out and demand picking up again. The complex, which according to Pertl "did not sack a single member" of its 1,400 staff this year, is currently recruiting more than 200 additional people to cope with the rising bookings.

"A healthy correction in the sector was necessary," Pertl said. Some of the hotel businesses in Dubai have been "hopelessly overstaffed" and are now scaling down to normal levels of staffing, he said. For its 200 new openings, the Intercontinental has received more than 3,000 applications, spokeswoman Aditi Daga said. "People are reaching out to new opportunities on the job market," she added.

The Intercontinental managed to navigate through the slower summer period not by granting excessive discounts on room rates, but by offering "value added benefits" such as shopping vouchers, free stay and free meals for kids and free use of the nearby golf course Al Badia, Pertl said. These offers mainly attracted family guests from the GCC countries and lead to 80 per cent occupancy rate in the Intercontinental and 90 per cent in the Crown Plaza over recent months.

However, the influx of guests from Europe, America and Asia remained low during the period. The hotel is now "proactively" approaching those guests especially in the conference travel sector by following the same "value added" concept.

As a result, monthly enquiries for conferences at the Intercontinental quadrupled from 10 to 40 recently, Pertl said.

"In the same way we experienced the sudden decline in bookings from Europe, America and Asia earlier this year, we are now experiencing the rebound. It is all going very quickly in this business," Pert said.

"The sentiment is clearly coming back. I am in a very positive mood."

Intercontinental took over the management of Al Badia Golf Club from Al Futtaim group several weeks ago and is now promoting the venue as "the best golf club in the Middle East", but is reducing annual membership fees "significantly" from the previous rate of over Dh40,000. The Golf Club also aims to attract the new customer segment of discerning leisure tourists.