A new report by STR Global shows the UAE accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the planned new hotels in the Middle East and Africa. There are a total of 468 planned hotels (pipeline) which represents 126,464 rooms, and 47 per cent or 59,543 of these are located in the UAE. STR Vice President for content management Duane Vinson said “In the Middle East, the UAE is exploding on the scene with four times the projects in the ‘In Construction’ phase compared with its closest competitor, Saudi Arabia.” Vinson said there are 54 projects being built for Dubai alone.
The STR report analyzed five regions and the Middle East/Africa region was the only region having the biggest segment of pipeline hotels planned for the luxury segment. The luxury segment represents 31,706 rooms or 25.1 per cent of the total pipeline. The situation is the opposite in Europe with 22,311 rooms or 23.7 per cent of its total pipeline are in the economy segment.
