22-23 January 2018
Le Royal Meridien Beach Resort & Spa, Dubai, UAE
Le Royal Meridien Beach Resort & Spa, Dubai, UAE
Conference Day One: Monday, 22 January 2018
8:00 am - 8:50 am Start of conference registration with welcome refreshments
8:50 am - 9:00 am Opening remarks from the conference chairman
Market potential: What does 2018 have in store for the Middle East?
9:00 am - 9:30 am Change in the hospitality landscape: New paradigms and perspectives
The industry is ever-evolving, and knowledge of hospitality trends is crucial in order to stay competitive in the market. From zero-waste hotels to Internet of Things, the industry is modernising from the ground up. However, hoteliers must carefully evaluate the upcoming opportunities and choose only those that will guarantee an increase in market share and guest satisfaction.
This presentation will highlight the latest trends to impact the hospitality landscape and the overall guest experience.
9:30 am - 10:00 am Attracting millennials through sustainable and smart design concepts
Experts predict that millennials will make up over 50 per cent of the world’s hotel guests by 2020.
This is why hotel brands are rushing to meet and exceed the needs of these travelers.
This presentation will express how hotels can meet the expectations of tech-savvy guests while simultaneously renovating and upgrading their infrastructure and offering sustainable design concepts to embrace millennials and secure future revenue.
10:00 am - 10:30 am Choosing the right brand partner for your hotel project
Successful completion of your hotel project depends on on-going collaboration between many different stakeholders: developers, consultants, architects, designers, contractors and suppliers.
The right partners will help you reach your goals efficiently, on time and within budget. However, choosing the best team is becoming even more challenging. This presentation will highlight the most important criteria when choosing the project partner and explain how to make sure that suppliers are reliable.
10:30 am - 11:00 am Hotels development and operations efficiency
This presentation will address the best ways to manage hotel operations efficiently when margins are tight and competition is extremely high.
11:00 am - 11:30 am Networking break and refreshments
11:30 am - 12:10 pm PANEL DISCUSSION: Enhancing the competitiveness of hotels and resorts and envisioning the future of the regional economy
The Middle East holds one of the largest hotel development pipelines in the world with more than 300 hotels in the construction phase. Therefore, competition across the region is extremely high and hotel owners and operators have to continuously upgrade their infrastructure to increase their market share and stay competitive.
In this session, leading hoteliers will discuss what their plans are to ensure the future competitiveness of their hotels.
This session will address:
- Key driving factors behind the impressive pipeline of hotels coming up in the Middle East
- Life after Expo 2020: Future plans to ensure the continued prominence of the hospitality industry after the expo is over
- Strategies to cope with the supply and demand challenges and maintaining high Average Daily Rates given the rising competitiveness
Best practices to overcome design and planning challenges in hotel construction
12:10 pm - 12:40 pm Master plan challenges in designing hotels
- Considering the consequences of hotel projects that lacked appropriate designs
- Detecting flaws during early stages of development to prevent redesign, reconstruction and safety issues
12:40 pm - 1:10 pm The benefits of partnering with a solution provider
• Working together to support project priorities
• Common challenges within hospitality
• An introduction to Alshaya Enterprises
1:10 pm - 1:40 pm Saint-Gobain’s Multi-Comfort Strategy for the hospitality sector and how comfort levels affect the hospitality experience
• Saint-Gobain Group and Multi-Comfort strategy
• The correlation of comfort levels and the hospitality experience
• References and examples
Creating a fire strategy for your hotel
1:40 pm - 2:10 pm Firestopping in hotels: Ensuring the life protection and property safety
With the increase of building fires in the Middle East region, the issue of fire safety has framed the concerns of hotel owners and operators. This presentation will discuss some of the advanced technologies and fire-stop materials that professionals should consider when they look to safeguard their hotels.
2:10 pm - 2:40 pm A holistic design approach to fire & life safety
The presentation outlines the approach to fire safety design for hotels and highlights how a fire strategy is holistic, meaning all elements of the design are important and a coordinated design and construction is essential if the fire strategy is to be properly implemented.
2:40 pm - 3:40 pm Networking lunch and end of the conference day one
The published programme is correct at time of printing. However, given the seniority of our speakers and the nature of their roles, speakers may subsequently substitute or remove themselves from the programme. This is always regrettable, and we will always try to replace the speaker with a speaker with equivalent insight.