| Kippreport.com

A look at Jumeirah

January 13, 2011 2:32 by Eva Fernandes

Deals won

Late last month the group signed with the now recently opened Jumeirah Zabeel Saray, which is the second luxury hotel on the Palm after the Atlantis. According to a company spokesman, Jumeirah Group had been working since August to get the Jumeriah Zabeel Saray up and ready for its debut, replacing Turkish hospitality company Rixos Hotel which was previously working on the project.

The Zabeel Saray project marks the first of six new properties Jumeirah is set to launch in 2011. In the coming months, it will launch the Venu Himalays Hotel Shanghai – a futuristic “lifestyle” venue in Shanghai. The company has also signed agreements for properties in Qiandaohu, China for a resort owned by Luihe Group to open in 2014. Other Jumeriah managed projects to launch in the year include Jumeirah Dhevanafushi, a villa resort in Maldives, and Jumeirah Vittaveli, a resort of villas and suites in south Male.

The group’s international expansion can be best described as intensive, then. Currently it boasts more than 35 planned hotels in places like Argentina, Thailand, Morocco and China. In fact, just last week Jumeirah announced plans to manage a resort in Anguilla, in the Caribbean, not long after it had announced plans for hotels in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Deals lost:

But not everything has gone smoothly. The group very recently lost its contract with the Meydan hotel at the Meydan racecourse and its contract with Bab Al Shams desert resort; the two properties are now being managed by Meydan. Losing the Meydan was to be expected – the company stepped in to run the place at the last minute, after all – a temporary arrangement. But Bab Al Shams has been with Jumeirah for years, and Kipp thinks it’ll be a sad loss for the business.

With its speed of expansion, however, we doubt it’ll bother Jumeirah for too long.

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Tags: Jumeirah, Jumeirah Group, Jumeirah Group developments, Jumeirah Group expansions, Jumeirah Group redundancies, Jumeriah Group, Jumeriah Group Dubai