Hospitality news tips

Keshav Suri, executive director, Lalit Suri Hospitality Group, is looking to serve India’s LGBTQ community.

As Chinese travel into the Middle East continues to increase, one of the country’s largest hotel operators sees an opportunity. While it’s not as commonly known in the West, H World is a giant in the hotel industry, with around 9,300 hotels and close to one million rooms across the world.

Luxury hospitality brand Raffles has a new operations vice president for the Middle East. Ayman Gharib, who was earlier the managing director of the brand’s flagship hotel in Dubai, moves up to the role.

Nurai Island was the gem of Abu Dhabi hospitality, a favorite among the rich and a featured location on the Real Housewives of Dubai. Now it says it is shutting down temporarily – though it’s unclear when it will reopen.

Ennismore’s Delano brand will open in Dubai this year on Bluewaters Island, the location of the former Caesars Palace. Delano is the same upmarket flag already found in Las Vegas and Paris.

Oberoi Group — known for its luxury hotel brands Oberoi and Trident — is quietly developing new hotels close to nature, the company’s top boss revealed on Wednesday.

Hilton is gearing up for what it believes will be its best year yet in India. Currently operating 26 hotels in India, Hilton is set to double its footprint in the country in the next 3 to 4 years.

$3,431: That’s how much it will cost to stay at the new Ritz-Carlton Reserve hotel in Saudi Arabia for a night. The super-exclusive, small key-count resort opens for bookings on May 26, hitting the market with the highest rates in the region.

Guido De Wilde is out of retirement. De Wilde is one of the great city builders of Dubai, serving as the regional chief operating officer for Marriott International during the formative years of the modern emirate. De Wilde retired in June 2021, partly due to a cancer diagnosis.

During the unveiling of the Aman Dubai this week, chairman and CEO Vlad Doronin said it will “probably” be the most expensive hotel in the UAE.

Jumeirah Group has appointed a chief brand officer to “spearhead the evolution of the brand,” the luxury Dubai hotel chain said Thursday.

Partly-owned by one of the richest Saudi royals in the world, Four Seasons is on its way to becoming one of the most dominant luxury hotel chains in the country.

Hilton has signed deals for three new hotels in Saudi Arabia: There are two Curio Collections, one focused on “eco” and the other on adventure. And an LXR resort will be an “agritourism” property as part of a tie-in with Saudi’s new farming tourism organization, Dan Company.

Dubai’s booming restaurant sector has its own 50-minute episode in a Netflix show out Friday: The seventh season of ‘Somebody Feed Phil,’ a travel show where Philip Rosenthal (creator of the sitcom ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’) tours restaurants across major global cities.

Abu Dhabi hotel group Rotana has a casino project in the works, and investment in the resort is open to anyone, starting at US$89,400 for a hotel room.

The proposed multi-billion-dollar Atlantis resort in Hawaii shows no signs of life after the company entrusted to build it went into liquidation last month, according to a filing on the Hong Kong exchange.

Just two days after the Economic Times reported that Oyo had met with regulators to expedite its IPO, it reported that the hotel operator wanted to back out of the public offering.

Dubai is one of Marriott’s largest markets for branded residences outside the U.S. – an upmarket segment of real estate that has boomed over the past decade. Today, Marriott has nine branded residences in Dubai, as well as two more in Ras Al Khaimah and a string of ultra-expensive Bulgari properties.

Red Sea Global, the project developer in Saudi Arabia, is building up its hotel business, and it’s backed by a fund with more money than the market values of Hilton, Marriott and Accor combined.

Maltese independent hotel firm Cornithia has hired a new CEO, Simon Casson, the previous Europe, Middle East and Africa president of Four Seasons. Casson steps into the luxury hotel owner-operator while it is still feeling the sting of the pandemic four years ago.

IHG will take over the management of Dubai’s Côte d’Azur Monaco Hotel, the only operational property on The Heart of Europe project. The Heart of Europe dates back to 2008 and remains committed to opening all its 20 planned hotels, even 16 years later.