Accor, the French hotel chain who owns Sofitel, Novotel and Ibis, has announced that it will be doubling its number of hotels in the UAE within the next three years.
“The first four hotels will open sometime in the second quarter of 2012 and the Sofitel Corniche will open in December 2011,” Christophe Landais, managing director of Accor, Middle East, told Arabian Business.
“We are talking about 1,500-1,600 jobs for the capital. In total we’ll be opening another six hotels, four of which will be in Dubai and two in Fujairah. The whole thing will add up to about 3,500 rooms and you can account for about 4,000 jobs in total.” He added that in Abu Dhabi, “the market supply versus the demand is slightly unbalanced at the moment.”
Accor also aims to expand in Qatar, where it hopes to open at least one of each of its brands.
“If we can have each brand represented with one property that would be a good start. After that it all depends on location and size,” said Charlie Langlais, regional CEO of Accor.