Event horizon

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The Palladium recently opened in the UAE’s Dubai Media City.

The Middle East has worked hard to build a reputation as a global events hub, catering to everything from conferences and awards ceremonies to sporting events. But is the market in good enough shape to survive the slowdown, asks Lucy Taylor?

Through its dedication to building breathtaking new venues and enticing both business and leisure tourists to take advantage of such facilities, the Middle East has become a hive of activity for events — both regional and international — of many different varieties.

For example, the World Travel Awards — travel and tourism industry accolades recognising best practice — were this year held at The Monarch Dubai.

“We were catering for 370 guests from the travel industry for a sit-down dinner,” says the hotel’s director of conference and events, Andreas Fasel.

“As for a gala event, the best solution for this type of event was a set menu, which was created by our executive chef, Ademir Husagic. We were given the full creative approach in terms of the menu selection and the organiser did not interfere in the creation of the menu or the set-up of the event; we were given total freedom to ensure high expectations in terms of quality and service were met.”

Meanwhile Fairmont Dubai’s annual Arabian Travel Market (ATM) party, this year boasting a ‘Roaring 20s’ theme, catered for 500 guests at the hotel’s Club 400 nightclub venue.

Fairmont Dubai director — food and beverage Sunny Joseph explains: “The food menu at the ATM party consisted of a hot and cold savoury buffet, a dessert room featuring a chocolate fountain and a gourmet cheese display, as well as hot and cold canapés. The menu items chosen were traditional gourmet canapés with a 1920’s flair, including ornate chocolate frills, iced figures from the 1920s era and edible cameos embellished on individual desserts.

“To ensure the smooth running of the ATM party, the planning begins three months prior to the event,” he adds. “Once the concept is finalised, the food and beverage strategy is developed to compliment the theme, venue and target audience.”

If these gatherings sound like they took a lot of planning, spare a thought for those who are continuously catering for events.

At Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), as executive chef Harald Oberender points out, the catering team could come into contact with a whole range of possible events from week to week. “To begin with, the sheer size of our catering operation is huge — last year we had more than 1.1 million customers. That gives you an idea of the size of this operation,” he explains.

“MICE is obviously the key part, but we do have a lot of weddings to cater for and we do catering in the other six emirates of the UAE as well. Plus there are seven outlets at the Centre and for big events like Gulfood there are often lunches or parties for exhibitors as well.

“For these, we’ll have various bars, live cooking stations, and so on. We have chefs from 17 different countries in our kitchen so there’s a lot of variety,” he explains.

“Staff-wise, these kinds of events can require anything from 500 members upwards. We have that many on our full-time team but for big events we have to take staff on, so that number may reach 1000.”

At The Palladium, a new multi-purpose venue in Dubai Media City, owners International Communications Entertainment (ICE) recently partnered with Jebel Ali International Hotels (JAI Hotels), making the group the exclusive food and beverage partners in catering across the whole venue.

“That covers various facets,” notes Dutco Hospitality food and beverage concept director William Harley-Fleming. “You have restaurants, lounges, the main auditorium, and the beauty of that is that it’s very flexible. We can hold a seated banquet in the main auditorium for 1200, then you can do 3000 for a seated show or 5000 for a standing concerts. So that flexibility is a major advantage and selling point of the venue.

“There are three main restaurants: a cafe-style outlet; the Meditteranean theatre kitchen; then there’s the fine-dining restaurant, which has an aerial view of the auditorium. We’ll also have a fourth outlet — a cigar lounge. That concept’s in progress at the moment. These should all be up-and-running by the end of the year.”

JAI Hotels hosted its first event — an awards ceremony — in May. “There were just over 1000 people at this seated event,” says Harley-Fleming. “We had a lot of live cooking installations, to offer as diverse a mix for the large party as possible, so it really covered a lot of aspects and had the fun element of show-cooking.”

Catering for a sporting venue is on a larger scale still. For the recent Grand Prix, Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) had to deal with catering for 34,500 spectators on a daily basis.

“On top of this, we offer catering for the paddock club guests, we cater for 34 corporate lounges and we offer team catering for another 400 people. Lastly there is the staff and volunteer catering which covers another 1500 or so people every day,” says BIC press officer Mohammed Al Awadi.

“The types of catering have evolved over the last five Grand Prix,” he continues. “The public catering is a mixture of fast food, coffees, fresh juices and sandwiches — typical event fare. We also offer the Gulf Air Club where guests can obtain hot food or drinks, then the hospitality catering is high end breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea in the comfort of a hospitality lounge or suite.

“Some items can be prepared in advance and frozen, but the remaining food is prepared on a daily basis and delivered fresh to the customer.”

Event obstacles

No matter how well an event is planned there will be challenges, most of which (unintentionally or otherwise) will be caused by the guests themselves.

Fairmont’s Joseph points out that potential late arrivals must be taken into account: “Service needs to be constant throughout the night to ensure guests arriving later in the evening receive the same levels and accessibility to food and beverage.”

BIC’s Al Awadi notes that catering for large numbers is always a logistical challenge. “We have to operate out of largely temporary facilities and it is imperative that these are built to the highest standards for hygiene and safety reasons,” he explains.

“As the Grand Prix was later this year [and therefore the weather was hotter], we also had to allow for a increase in the areas where we store water and soft drinks due to the increase in demand.”

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