Dubai hotels will probably never be able to achieve the peak rates that they had experienced prior to the current downturn, Julian Kemp, associate director,said today in a statement. Rate increases will be hampered by the large amount of hotel rooms due to open in Dubai and the ability of people to negotiate better rates on both a corporate and leisure basis, he noted.
Looking at this year, he said the general consensus among the industry is that 'trading will be tough'.
'[The] UK is one of the prime sources of demand for Dubai and with a high degree of uncertainty in respect of the economy for this year, travel for both leisure and business is likely to remain depressed,' he said.
'As such, the immediate impact to hotels will be a loss in occupancy levels which in turn leads to a drop in roomrates. As a result, in our opinion the average room rate (ARR) is likely to decrease further or at best remain in line with results achieved in 2009.'
