Best Western to explore Levant options

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Expect regional changes, de Souza says.

Best Western's plans for the region are on track, with the company signalling its intention to expand its focus to the Levant in addition to the GCC.

The company currently has an exclusive arrangement with Mohebi Investments to develop a footprint through the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with Best Western vice president international operations for Asia Glenn de Souza telling Hotelier Middle East the plan was to develop 25 hotels across the next five years.

"[Mohebi] are giving us the first hotel in Dubai which will open in January 2009 with 220 rooms, which we will call the Best Western Residential," he said.

"Two other projects [in Dubai] will probably start by the end of the year, and will be complete by 2011, with those three properties giving us a base of about 1000 rooms."

The company also operates properties through a secondary company in Egypt, but did not yet have plans in place to cover the Levant area, de Souza continued.

"We have had a lot of enquiries from people in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the like who are looking to develop hotels in these countries," he said. "This is something that we will need to speak to Best Western head office about to see if this is a possibility."

And those familiar with the Best Western brand in the United States can expect a few differences when the Middle East product is revealed to the market, de Souza said.

"The smallest [room size] we will do will be 28m², - the service levels will be different, the size will be different," he explained.

"We run at 85% occupancy in other parts of the world. But out here if you want to compete with the other chains that are ahead of us [in their regional presence] for the last 20 years, we need to put ourself at a minimum four-star and that is what the customers want - they want all the service that you can provide."

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