Dubai is leading the Middle East and Africa in new hotel developments with 96 total projects and 36,523 rooms in the pipeline, a report released on Wednesday said.

A Tophotelprojects report said Dubai, which has been the Middle East and Africa's leading city for hotel openings for the past three years, is now recording an all-time high activity to boost the room capacity from the current 65,000 to over 100,000 by 2020.

According to JLL, a leading real estate investment and advisory firm, Dubai is set to see a massive increase of 28,000 new hotel rooms by 2018.

Statistics at the end of 2014 show that Dubai had 413 graded hotel establishments with a total of 65,000 rooms, up 3,500 compared to 2013.

Including hotel apartments, Dubai's total hotel portfolio grew from 611 to 659 — a 7.8 per cent growth over the course of the year. Supply has grown at five per cent per annum over the last five years. Total room supply is expected to grow 12.5 per cent per annum between 2015 and 2018.

According to the latest figures issued by Dubai's Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, in 2014 alone, of the 44 new hotels and hotel apartments (comprising 27 hotels and 17 hotel apartments), 13 hotels came from the four-star sector and nine of the new apartments fell into the standard classification.

The boom is mid-market hotels was spurred by Dubai government's incentives including 10 per cent fee waiver.

Christine Davidson, event director of The Hotel Show Dubai, the largest event for the hospitality industry in the region, said a total of 694 hotel projects are currently underway in the Middle East and Africa to add 188,817 rooms to the market over the coming years, the majority before 2020.

The busiest year for Dubai hotels is reported to be 2017, with 30 projects opening to the public. Dubai's first fully-solar-powered hotel, Hotel Indigo Dubai The Sustainable City, and its first Mandarin Oriental and Bulgari luxury hotels are to open in 2017.

The major Dubai Pearl development, a "mix of six innovative five-star hotels” is reported to launch in early 2018 including Dubai's first MGM Grand and Bellagio hotels, brands made famous by the Las Vegas strip.

Other hot spots are Morocco with 46 active projects, Riyadh with 43 and Doha with 38, following closely behind Dubai. Of almost 700 total hotel projects in the pipeline for the Middle East and Africa, 528 are listed as being in the pre-planning, planning and construction stages, with local and international investors now requiring the materials to build across technology and security, interiors, food services and more.

According to data compiled by STR Global, the Middle East/Africa region reported mixed year-over-year results in the three major performance metrics during May 2015 when reported in US dollars.

The region reported a three per cent increase in occupancy to 65.1 per cent, a 5.7-per cent drop in average daily rate to $142.54 and a 2.9 per cent decrease in revenue per available room to $92.81.
Source: Khaleej Times