Former waiter puts expansion at top of the menu for UAE hotel group
To get to the top, Omer Kaddouri started at the bottom. The Iraqi-British national, now President and CEO of Abu Dhabi-based Rotana Hotels, remembers beginning his career as a banqueting headwaiter at the Kensington Hilton in London in the late 1980s.
Kaddouri describes the role as “the toughest job” he has ever had. “It included 18-hour shifts and sleeping under banquet tables”, he says. “I would sleep at 2.30am and wake at 6am to prepare for a conference. That was really my ‘hello, this is the hotel business’.”
He’s come a long way in the business. Now his job involves keeping a watch on Rotana’s 52 hotels, some 35 of which are in the UAE, while the others are spread across the Middle East and Africa. Sometimes, he even takes care of royalty. But it’s not always about life in the lap of luxury nowadays.
Rotana’s leisure and business hotels include five-star accommodation, Rayhaan (the alcohol-free, four-star hotel), Arjaan hotel apartments, Rotana residences – and the three-star Centro brand. “In the UAE, we are focusing on expanding our Centro brand, which falls in the government’s directives to build more mid-level hotels”, says Kaddouri.
“We have to cater to all segments of the industry, not everyone coming to the UAE has high budgets, which is why we plan to add five Centro hotels to the existing five in the UAE”.
Kaddouri, who declined to reveal Rotana’s financial details, claiming it was a private company, says that 54 more hotels are in various stages of development around the world. Eighteen will be open by 2016 and all 54 by 2020. About “10 to 12” of the hotels are in the UAE.
However, Kaddouri also says that Rotana Hotels, founded in the early 1990s, has “very big plans for the African market, which will be our largest focus point”.
The World Bank identifies Africa as the poorest continent on Earth – but Rotana, among many others in business, believes it has rich potential. Rotana currently has hotels in Egypt and Sudan but is also developing ones in Tanzania, Nigeria, Angola and Mauritania. “The African market is extremely important. There is a lack of quality hotels, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, with a lot of space for development”, says Kaddouri.
“A lot of these mineral-rich countries have just realised their worth and a lot of people are travelling there, they need good, comfortable hotels. We feel we could grow our Centro brand, which is our fastest-moving brand, there”.
When it comes to competition in the hotel industry, Kaddouri is confident that Rotana are up there on a par with the major international brand names. “We go head to head, and in many cases even better, in this region”, he said.
“Hilton, Sheraton, Marriott, we are on level with them. There is not much difference except that they are global and we are a regional company, becoming global. In our market, we are very comfortable giving them equal competition”.
Large international MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing and exhibitions) events, a lot of which are driven by the government, can bring in up to 30,000 people to the UAE per time, he adds.
“While the UAE would rank high on governmental support to this industry, and we are thankful for that, we need more”, Kaddouri says. “The upcoming hotels here need to be fed.” And he wants Rotana Hotels to feast at that banquet.
He insists: “In this region, people know us, we have more inventory per city than any other hotel chain does, people know we are value for money. They recognise us especially because we are a homegrown company – which is also why we can provide them the best in this region as compared to hotels coming from outside”.
