Dubai-based Emaar Hospitality, the operator of the Address, Vida and Rove hotel brands in the United Arab Emirates and other countries, is targeting its efforts on attracting both younger visitors and travellers from neighbouring Gulf markets into its properties, its chief executive has said.

Olivier Harnisch, the CEO of Emaar Hospitality, the hotel management arm of Dubai-based Emaar Properties, said in a press conference on Sunday at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) exhibition and conference that his company has set several priority areas for the coming period.

“We are really focusing on the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]. The United Arab Emirates and our neighbouring countries,” he said.

Harnisch added that the company is already present in the Saudi Arabian market and is planning further expansion in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia, the GCC's biggest economy and most populous nation, last year announced plans to boost its tourism sector and has recently lifted a 35-year-old ban on cinemas. The first commercial movie theatre in Saudi opened last weekend.

“We have initial leads that will be announced soon in the key cities,” Harnisch said in the press conference, speaking about the company’s future plans in Saudi Arabia. He later told Zawya that he expects an announcement on a new project in Saudi Arabia to be made in “the coming few months”. However, he declined to give a more exact time or location.

Harnisch also said his company was targeting millennial travellers – a segment which its Rove brand is aimed.

This younger age profile is also leading to Emaar Hospitality investing much more in technologies that facilitate the hotels’ service offering for guests. He said the integration of these technologies will not lead to job cuts but will help enhance and ease tasks.

Emaar Hospitality announced in April last year that it had developed a new model for hotels it will manage on behalf of third parties. The said it would work on an ‘incentive fee’ structure based on a share of the profits generated. It said this was a significant departure from standard industry practices where hotel management contracts are defined by hotel revenues, meaning that managers make money whether hotels are profitable or not. (Read the full report here).

Harnisch said at the Arabian Travel Market that the company is looking into a number of opportunities outside the region, including markets in China, India and Africa. Last year, it announced a deal to manage a new Address Hotels-branded resort in the Maldives.

Click here for Zawya's Special Coverage of Arabian Travel Market 2018.

(Reporting by Yasmine Saleh; Editing by Michael Fahy)
(yasmine.saleh@thomsonreuters.com)

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