Leading Asian hospitality group Dusit International and regional hoteliers Dyar Hotels and Resorts have signed an agreement to establish a joint venture hospitality management company to open new properties in Saudi Arabia.

Dyar has over 30 years of experience owning and operating hotels throughout the GCC and their local knowledge and expertise, coupled with Dusit’s international experience accumulated over 65 years, will offer truly distinctive products managed in a Shariah compliant manner to the growing Middle Eastern hospitality market.

The new company has already confirmed three projects in the pipeline. One will be located in Jeddah under the Dusit Thani label. The other two projects, to be located in both Jeddah and Doha (Qatar), will come under the company’s chic and contemporary “next generation” dusitD2 brand.

A further five properties are currently under negotiation in the Holy Cities of Makkah and Madinah, which together form the largest tourism market within Saudi Arabia. In 2014 alone, the Holy Cities collectively welcomed 18 million visitors and this number is expected to surge to 23 million by 2020. This exceptional market is amply catered for by Dyar’s sister company Nebras for Tourism Development, an established tourism company providing integrated services for visitors and pilgrims. It is also one of only 48 companies authorised by the Ministry of Hajj to issue Religious Tourism visas.

Outbound tourism from Saudi Arabia is also significant. Nearly 30 per cent of yearly arrivals to Dubai, where Dusit has been operating for over 14 years, hail from Saudi Arabia — over 1.5 million travellers.

Major infrastructure projects are currently underway, such as the expansion of Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport to accommodate 80 million guests by 2035, the Haramain High Speed Railway linking Jeddah to Makkah, and over 30,000 hotel rooms set to come to market over the coming years.

“We have been looking for a way to work within the kingdom for some time,” said Chanin Donavanik, managing director and CEO of Dusit International. “We are proud to partner now with Dyar Hotels and Resorts — their local expertise and decades of experience will be invaluable to the success of Dusit within Saudi Arabia, and we are confident the alliance of an international hotel chain with the knowledge, relationships and distribution channels of a regional operator will provide owners with a compelling proposition.” – TradeArabia News Service