Mid-market focus for Dubai’s hotel pipeline

Almost 70% of new hotel rooms entering the Dubai market in the final months of 2015 will be mid-market focused, a report by Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) has revealed.

The Q4, 2015 pipeline comprises 3,600 new rooms, with 69 percent rated four-star or less and almost 50 percent possessing a three-star or lower rating.

“This will add much-needed mid-scale room stock to the emirate’s hotel landscape, where three-star or below room supply only accounted for 29 percent of total availability in the first quarter of 2015,” said Nadege Noblet-Segers, exhibition manager for Arabian Travel Market (ATM), the 2016 edition of which will adopt a mid-market theme, such is the sector’s increasing importance to the diversification of Dubai’s business and leisure tourism offering.

The emirate has already rolled out a number of initiatives to encourage investment in mid-market properties having released government land plots for three- and four-star hotel projects.

The government has also sped up the construction permit approval process for these properties to just two months and waived the 10 percent municipality room tax for four years upon completion.

Dubai’s total hotel key count is approximately 94,000. This figure is set to rise to between 140,000 and 160,000 keys by 2020 with around 20 percent of those rooms attributed to the mid-market hotel sector.

ATM will run several mid-market focused seminars at next year’s event, which will take place at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre (DICEC) from April 25 to 28, 2016.

The exhibition will run concurrently with the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference (AHIC), which will take place at Madinat Jumeirah from April 26 to 28.