MILLENNIUM Hotels & Resorts has announced plans to develop 35 hotels in the Mena region region over the next five years.
A major portion of the new hotels will be under the three-star Kingsgate brand. The company will substantially increase its participation at the ATM to push its ambitious plans.
“Our approach to the market will mainly focus on management contracts which will cover different levels – our Millennium brand as our 5 star brand, the Copthorne brand which will focus on the 4-star development and we are introducing, for the first time in the region, our 3-star brand which is the Kingsgate,” says Ali Hamad Lakhraim, president of Millennium Hotels & Resorts for Middle East & Africa.
“We believe that with our vast global experience we can add a lot to the market, having a combination of both, Eastern and Western philosophy backed with a very strong local management which will make us one of the few international players having such a combination,” he says.
The Kingsgate brand, existing mainly in Australia and New Zealand, will be launched within a few months with its first property in Abu Dhabi and will target a different type of clientele focusing on the basic requirements of the guest, he said. “We envisage this brand to grow quickly with a plan to have more than 20 hotels in the area for the next three years,” says Lakhraim.
Millennium Hotels has signed a management contract for a new 218-room hotel in Doha, the group’s first hotel in Qatar due to open in September 2006. Existing properties in the region include the Millennium Hotel Abu Dhabi (325 rooms), Millennium Airport Hotel Dubai (496 rooms) and the Millennium Hotel Sharjah (259 rooms) and the Coral Beach Diving Hotel in the resort of Marsa Alam – Port Ghalib in Egypt (206 rooms). The Millennium Tiran Hotel & Resort at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt is due to open early in 2007 with an approximation of 440 rooms.
Millennium Hotels owns asset manages and/ or operates over 100 hotels in 15 countries around the world.