Dur Hospitality, one of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent hotel developers and owner-operators, is eyeing more expansion across geographies and segments.
Speaking to Hotel News Now at the Arabian & African Hospitality Investment Conference, the firm's President of Hotels Operations Hassan Ahdab said Dur Hospitality is growing in parallel with its home country of Saudi Arabia.
The company is publicly traded on the Saudi Tadawul exchange and has a market capitalization rate of $928 million. Dur Hospitality will celebrate its 45th anniversary in December.
“We have little in our portfolio outside of Saudi Arabia, where we have a lot on our plate,” Ahdab said, adding that the country’s largest hotel development projects, as part of its Vision 2030 program, are keeping his firm and others very busy.
The Saudi government’s goal for that plan is to turn the country into one of the world’s top five or 10 destinations.
“There are 30 million Saudis, 60% of [whom] are under 30 years of age, and 40% are women, mostly highly qualified,” he said.
Ahdab said in 2019 Dur Hospitality set up the Dur Academy to increase the hotel sector’s professionalism, expertise and knowledge.
“Hotel expertise in the country is growing quickly, and it needs to,” he said.
Saudi land prices are also rising, he added.
“They have increased noticeably lately,” he said.
Dur Hospitality, originally called the Saudi Hotels & Resorts Co. or SHARACO, signed a partnership with Marriott International approximately 40 years ago, which included opening the first Marriott hotel in the Middle East, the 418-room Marriott Riyadh.
Dur Hospitality signed another master development agreement in 2014 with IHG Hotels & Resorts that has resulted in assets such as the 304-room Crowne Plaza Palace Hotel in Riyadh, which completed a renovation this year, and the 2020 opening of the 144-room Holiday Inn & Suites Al Jubail in the Al Fanatir district of the Saudi Persian Gulf city of Al Jubail.
Owned Brands
Dur does not only sign franchise agreements, Ahdab said. Its owned brands are all in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
“There are many emerging cities in Saudi Arabia, not just the capital Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca and Medina. Outside the Holy Cities we have no fully owned brands, just franchise partnerships with international ones, which we feel perform better for us in those markets,” he said.
Its Makarem Hotels brand, founded in 1983, is one of those brands fully dedicated to the Holy Cities and pilgrims fulfilling their religious obligations, he said. The brand will soon reach approximately 2,000 rooms. Currently it has six hotels, one in Jeddah and five in Mecca, with Mecca’s Makarem Ajyad Hotel among those properties recently renovated.
Almost 2,000 rooms are in Makarem’s pipeline, in line with Dur’s strategy to expand the brand’s presence in the two Holy Cities and increase its portfolio to 10,000 rooms by 2028.
One of those projects, in partnership with Al-Manakha Urban Project Development Holding Co., will be for three hotels and 1,365 rooms in Mecca and Medina that all are due to open before the end of 2022.
In 2019, Dur also acquired a 60% stake in boutique hotel operator Shada Hospitality, and expansion plans for that flag include a 110-room hotel in Jeddah due in 2022 and a 115-room hotel in the Jumeirah district of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 2023, a rare foreign excursion.
A final brand, Dara, is another domestic joint venture aimed at serviced apartments. It currently has five assets.