A top executive for Swiss-Belhotel International said in several years, the Middle East will account for 25 percent of its global sales, prompting it to announce the addition of 1,000 new hotel rooms or five hotels to the region’s pipeline over the next eighteen months. Gavin Faull, Chairman and President of Swiss Belhotel International, said “We currently operate five hotels in the region or 750 rooms in total. Because we realized that in a couple of years, the Middle East will account for 25 percent of our global sales, we have diverted our resources to aggressively expand in the region by adding 1,000 rooms by early 2011.”
The Hong Kong based hospitality group plans to add 26 new properties to its portfolio of 30 hotels over the next eighteen months, bringing their total number of hotels to 120 by 2014. Faull did not reveal how much the company is investing in the region, but said it is a’ significant seven-figure amount’.
