Hotel Expansion in the Middle East Is Weighted Toward Higher-End Brands

Seven out of ten upcoming hotel projects in the Middle East are for properties that can command high rates, according to the latest Middle East Hotel Construction Pipeline Trend Report from Lodging Econometrics (LE).

As of June 30, the Middle East has a hotel pipeline of 545 projects with about 140,055 rooms. For the second consecutive quarter, 72 percent of the projects in the Middle East are in the top three chain scales (luxury, upper upscale, and upscale), with “upper-upscale” projects reaching record high project counts of 121 projects/31,950 rooms as of the second quarter, LE reported.

Franchise companies with the greatest number of projects in the region are led by Hilton Worldwide, with an all-time high project count of 98 projects (especially its Doubletree by Hilton brand), followed by Accor, with 83 projects.

In the second half of this year, another 63 hotels with 16,054 rooms are slated to open in the region. Within the next year, 87 projects are scheduled to start construction.
 
Countries in the region with the largest number of projects in the hotel construction pipeline are Saudi Arabia with 212 projects/60,045 rooms and the United Arab Emirates with 119 projects/33,121 rooms. Across the region, 61 percent of projects and 67 percent of rooms are in these two countries. Following distantly are Egypt, with record-high project and room counts of 74 projects/16,569 rooms, and Qatar, with an all-time high project count of 66 projects/15,168 rooms.

Dubai continues to lead the construction pipeline in the United Arab Emirates with 81 projects/24,382 rooms.