Dubai has 13,349 hotel rooms in building pipeline

Rixos The Palm is one of many hotel and resort projects underway in Dubai. Photo: ITP

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Dubai has more than 13,300 hotel rooms in the construction pipeline, more than the combined total of the next four largest markets.

Latest data from STR Global shows that the emirate has a total of 13,349 room in the pipeline while Abu Dhabi, the next largest market for hotel construction, had 5,298 rooms.

The December Construction Pipeline Report also said that Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2,687); Cairo, Egypt (1,977); and Amman, Jordan (1,507) were the other markets with more than 1,500 rooms being built in the Middle East and Africa region.

Overall, the region's development pipeline comprised 496 hotels totalling 133,438 rooms last month, STR Global said.

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Dubai hotels have been able to maintain revenues during 2011 despite a large increase in the number of rooms coming online, Ernst & Young said earlier this month.

In a report on the hotel industry in the Middle East and North Africa, it said the emirate had proved its "magnetic attraction as a tourist attraction".

Yousef Wahbah, MENA head of Transaction Real Estate, Ernst & Young, said: "Dubai has been successful in attracting a larger share of the GCC tourism market as well as penetrating the US and China markets more effectively as it is considered a stable and open market, boosting overall performance figures.

"Despite the large increase in the number of available rooms in Dubai in 2011, overall RevPar has not been affected which proves Dubai's magnetic attraction as a tourist destination."

Dubai was the sole tourist destination in the region that has shown a rise in both occupancy (4%) and revenue per available room (revPAR) (4.5%) with a very slight decline in room rates (down 0.2%), the report said.

Last month, a report by TRI Hospitality Consulting said occupancy levels at hotels in Dubai touched 2007 levels in October.

The study of hotels in six regional cities showed that Dubai saw occupancy increase to 87.3%.