Dubai: The Hyatt Regency Dubai Creek Heights opened Sunday, joining other hotels that are planned to open in the Dubai Creek area, which seems to be generating interests from a lot of hotels of late.
Hyatt’s new hotel is the latest addition to the list of hotel companies eyeing the Dubai Creek area to open properties in. These include Palazzo Versace hotel, which is expected to open this Spring in Culture Village, a mixed-used development along the shoreline of Dubai Creek, and the Anantara Dubai Creek Hotel, scheduled to open in the same area in 2018.
Located in Healthcare City, along Dubai Creek, the five-star Hyatt Regency Dubai Creek Heights targets business travellers, with the majority of guests staying this week from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. It will compete with hotels such as Jumeirah Creekside Hotel and Movenpick Hotel and Apartments Bur Dubai, according to its general manager, Mathieu Greppo.
The 464-room property, a part of US-based Hyatt Hotels Corporation, is targeting around 60 per cent occupancy during its first year of operations, while average room rate is likely to be Dh1,100, Greppo told reporters during a tour of the hotel on Sunday.
Covering 220,000 square metres, the hotel is developed by Wasl Hospitality, a subsidiary of Wasl Asset Management, a real estate management company in Dubai. It is part of a development that includes a conference centre and a 405-unit apartment building, called Hyatt Regency Creek Heights Residences, of which 100 units have already been sold. Guests started moving in on Sunday, Greppo said.
The hotel features 3,200 square metre conferencing facilities, including 13 meeting suites and two ballrooms that can be used to host meetings and conferences.
Larger inventory
Most of Hyatt’s Dubai properties are in the Dubai Creek area. Greppo said the proximity of other Hyatt-branded hotels allows it to attract guests that cannot be accommodated by those properties.
“We are just unifying our forces. We have a larger inventory to sell. Grand Hyatt has 674 rooms. They are quite often full. Where does the overflow go today? If it doesn’t go to the Park [Hyatt] because it’s a different segment, where does it go? It goes to the competition. So it would automatically come to us,” Greppo said.
He added that Hyatt is, however, looking to expand beyond Dubai Creek, towards Jebel Ali, without divulging any details. It also plans to open the 220-room Hyatt Tiara on Palm Jumeirah in mid-2016, alongside a 200-room serviced apartment building, Greppo said.
In Abu Dhabi, the hotel chain plans to open the 400-room Grand Hyatt Abu Dhabi, near Emirates Palace, by the end of this year.
Hyatt has five of its nine global brands in the Middle East, including Hyatt, Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Place and Hyatt Regency. Greppo expects most of the other brands to enter the UAE market in three years’ time.
The company plans to open a second Hyatt Place hotel in Dubai in June, near the existing one that opened in 2014.
