TTN’S publisher KIM THOMSON speaks to TAREK NABOULSI, vice president of the Elaf Group, which comprises Elaf Hotels Company, Elaf Haj and Umrah (inbound religious tourism division) and Elaf Travel and Tourism (outbound division).
At the moment are you operating eight hotels?
Yes, but we are opening four hotels by the end of 2009 making it a total of 12 properties.
Will these all be within Saudi Arabia?
Most of our hotels are operated in Mecca and Medina, however, this year we are opening in Jeddah and Riyadh - The Red Sea Mall Hotel in Jeddah which will open within this month (June) and will have one of the best malls in Saudi Arabia.
What kind of investment are you putting into your new properties?
One of the distinctions for Elaf Group is that we have a presence at every level of the supply chain. For example we exist as the property owners, we are owned by SEDCO (Saudi Economic Development Company), we are at the hotel operator level and we have investments in hotels and properties. Then we have our licence as the Umrah operators. We have four offices around the world - in Cairo, Casablanca, London and Istanbul - so have tourism companies in most of these cities. We are launching Elaf Egypt this year and we are looking at Morocco.
We are planning to have significant growth in our operations. At our strategy meeting end of last year we made a plan to expand our rooms. At the end of last year had about 1,000 rooms and by the end of this year will have about 2,300 rooms, and within with five years we are planning to exceed 5,000 rooms. These will all be within Saudi Arabia, within Elaf Hotels.
In Elaf travel, we are introducing new products and services related to the incentive group travel. We are also looking at the charter business so we are looking for strategic alliances.
What about occupancy levels this year?
Because of Elaf Hotels and Elalf Haj and Umrah Company, our resources and our closeness to the Arabian customer, we have been able to more effectively sell our rooms. So we have not seen a downturn and are managing to maintain RevPar.
Your outlook for the future?
We had an outstanding first quarter. We are looking for this trend to continue for the rest of the year.
Any plan to launch outside the region?
No not now. However, as mentioned earlier, we have expanded our properties outside of our traditional cities of Mecca and Medina by opening in Jeddah. We will also launch a budget hotel concept starting from 2010.