Hospitality industry in Dubai- An overview

Posted by rima chauhan on February 28th, 2020

Nowadays, Dubai is quite a common destination for business travelers and avid tourists alike. This growth has paved the way for a dramatic rise in the hospitality jobs in Dubai over the last couple of decades. Touted as a shopper’s paradise, an adventure seeker’s perfect destination, as well as a cultural haven, Dubai has witnessed an incredible rise in the number of hotel rooms in recent years, which has soared beyond the proverbial 100,000 mark. It is astounding to know that Dubai welcomes more than 15 million overnight visitors every year. It hardly comes as a surprise then, that the hospitality and travel industry in Dubai supports over 400,000 jobs. A lot of beach hotels speaks volumes about the sustained growth of the hospitality industry in Dubai. In fact, the Gulf News report, through KPMG’s studies, has suggested that the hotel industry of Dubai would sustain well after the World Expo 2020. This can be attributed to several theme parks and medical tourism.

Presently, the industry is motivated to firmly and strategically position itself amongst the ten leading global destinations where room availability is not an issue. Alongside, hotel jobs in Dubai will also be increasingly easy to land up. Besides being a thriving economy, Dubai also promises a plethora of ever-expansive leisure, events and attractive locations. With some of the oil reserves on the wane, it is the emirate’s hotel sector that is literally driving the job market. Besides the presence of some glorious names such as Burj Al Arab, Waldorf Astoria, Burk Khalifa, The Ritz-Carlton, One&Only Royal Mirage, etc., many other new hotels are also cropping up in Dubai as well as in UAE in general.

Going forward, post Expo—2020, industry insiders are of the opinion that more emphasis needs to be placed on building cost-efficient properties. After the completion of a hotel, the return on investment it will generate will depend on parameters such as gross floor area per key, building efficiency, and cost of construction per square metre. Needless to say, these factors should be prioritized. The industry not only has to adopt a smarter approach in building hotels in Business Bay Dubai but should also do so in a cost-effective manner. What’s more, this holds good not only in terms of hotel construction but also in operating them, which means continual evaluation of the deployment of resources to revenue projections, while delivering exceptional quality levels.

Industry experts also believe that in the future intelligent cost management will be more critical than ever. Productivity management, best-in-class benchmarking, and zero-based budgeting will go beyond their theoretical concepts to assume the role of essential tools. It is being speculated that these have immense room for improvement, when it comes to effective management of hotels in Business Bay, as well as the rest of Dubai.