Luxury Hotel Chain Bulgari Partners With Meraas To Debut In Dubai

Dubai-based real estate development company Meraas Holding has signed an agreement with luxury hotel chain Bulgari Hotels and Resorts to bring the brand to Dubai.

Located in Jumeirah Bay island, the Bulgari Hotel is a marine complex spread over 1.7 million sq ft, comprising 100 rooms and suites in the main hotel buildings, as well as 20 hotel villas and a range of luxury hotel facilities.

Designed by Italian architectural firm Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel and Partners, the hotel will offer a “mix of traditional and modern themes through the juxtaposition of new and conventional architecture,” the statement added.

Jumeirah Bay island, a six million sq ft mixed-use development sculpted in the shape of a titanic seahorse, is located off the coast of Jumeirah Beach Road. It will feature low rise residential villas and a marina in addition to the Bulgari Hotel.

Abdulla Al Habbai, group chairman of Meraas Holding said: “We are confident the new resort will emerge as a welcome addition to Dubai’s iconic shoreline. Through this key partnership, we will be expanding our portfolio in the hospitality sector in line with Dubai Vision 2020 for tourism.”

Bulgari Hotels and Resorts currently has four properties across the world in Milan, Bali, London, and Shanghai – which is anticipated to open in 2015.

Jean-Christophe Babin, CEO of Bulgari Group, said: “This project is for us part of a larger plan to forge a stronger presence in the GCC.”

New hotel launches have become fairly frequent in Dubai in the last year, as the emirate pursues its tourism strategy of welcoming 20 million tourists per year by 2020.

Over 11 million guests stayed at Dubai’s hotels last year, up 10.6 per cent compared to 9.9 million in 2012, with occupancy rates for hotel rooms and hotel apartments hitting 80 per cent.

On the supply side, the number of hotel rooms and apartments at the end of 2013 amounted to 84,534 compared to 80,414 in 2012, an increase of over five per cent.

To accommodate its targeted visitor numbers for 2020, Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) estimates a total requirement of between 140,000 to 160,000 rooms.

To keep pace with hotel demand, DTCM is collaborating closely with the hospitality sector to develop new properties in Dubai this year, according to DTCM’s director general Helal Al Marri.

“We are encouraging very healthy growth levels. If you take a simple statistic – tourist numbers are growing at 10 per cent per year and even if you halve that number, you still need the number of rooms to catch up. We are at very high occupancy today so if we are to continue with that, growth has to happen,” he told Gulf Business earlier this year.