Swiss-Belhotel International has identified the GCC as its main growth market in the MENA region, with plans to operate in every Gulf country by early 2020.
Unveiling the group’s expansion strategy, Laurent A Voivenel, senior vice president, Operations and Development for the Middle East, Africa and India, Swiss-Belhotel International, said: “Geographically speaking, our key focus is to expand and reinforce our position in the GCC through strong organic growth.”
He added: “The region continues to present us with fantastic opportunities to further enhance and diversify our portfolio. We are going to open this year in the GCC seven exceptional hotels – two in Kuwait, one in Oman, two in Bahrain, one in Saudi Arabia and one in Qatar. In addition, we have a robust development pipeline that will double our inventory of keys by 2020.”
The Middle East is the third largest growth market for Swiss-Belhotel International after Asia, New Zealand and Australia.
The company has 17 percent of its global portfolio of hotels in the Middle East and Africa region, comprising 3,000 rooms.
“Our target is to have 25 hotels representing approximately 6000 rooms in the region. However, GCC will continue to be our biggest market with 60 percent of portfolio concentrated here in high-growth business and leisure destinations by 2025,” Voivenel said.
Swiss-Belhotel International has also announced plans to open seven hotels across the Middle East and North Africa in 2019.
These openings will include the company’s debut in destinations such as Muscat, Kuwait City, Makkah and Alexandria, it said on the sidelines of the Arabian Travel Market.
All of the seven hotels are already in pre-opening stages with Swiss-Belsuites Admiral Juffair Bahrain and Swiss-Belinn Airport Muscat opening in the third quarter of 2019.
Three others namely Swiss-Belhotel Al Aziziyah Makkah, Grand Swiss-Belresort Seef, Bahrain and Swiss-Belresidences Al Sharq will be ready for opening in Q4.
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