UAE-based Time hotels which completes 10 years of operations this year has opened a representative office in India to cater to its third largest market. In an interview with India Outbound, Mohamed Awadalla, CEO, outlines key landmarks of the hotel’s journey and forecasts the market for the year ahead.

As you complete 10 years, what have been the key landmarks so far?

From its humble beginnings 10 years ago, Time Hotels is proud of the growth strategy to expand its portfolio across the Middle East countries with 10 operating hotels and 4 pipeline hotels with a development plan firmly established over the coming five years across the Middle East and Africa. We will have a total of 19 properties by the end of 2022.

What was the impact of pandemic on your business and have you started to emerge from that?

Time Hotels was one of the few hotel management company to have put in place a stringent profit protection plans with an enviable results of talent retention. Not one employee was made redundant despite long period of limited revenues. The Middle East is now well on its way to emerge from the pandemic and we have had record occupancy levels over the past five months at our UAE hotels due to the ongoing Dubai Expo and we expect this year to continue along the same trend.

Have all your properties reopened and with what capacity?

All hotels are opened and operating and are preforming in line or higher than budgets.

Which of your properties are best performing currently?

All GCC hotels are currently in the 90 pc occupancy mark, these are our hotels in Dubai, Fujairah, Doha, Riyadh and Dammam.

How has the footfall from India to your hotels been?

The Indian market ranked 3rd most important source market for Time Hotels, preceded only by the UAE for internal tourists and Saudi Arabia. Consequently, Time Hotels signed back in Q4 2021 a general sales agents agreement with an Indian company headquartered in Delhi representing our hotels in the Indian market. We have since seen great results by means of group demand from Indian corporate or leisure companies.

Which segment of the market from India is the most interesting for you?

Leads are mainly generated from leisure traveller and in particular group leisure visiting Dubai for exhibitions or conferences. We expect this to change in coming summer and shift to Indian families travelling on holidays.

What are your expectations from 2022?

We are very bullish in 2022 as we see the repercussions of Covid-19 decreasing or disappearing all together. The GCC has been lucky with Expo leading the way to recovery and driving demand in Q1, 2022. A longing for leisure travellers to be on the road again that will drive demand in Q2 and Q3 and group leads already generated for Qatar and UAE hotels in Q4 for FIFA World Cup.

What are your future plans for expansion?

We are currently in multiple negotiations for hotels across the GCC region and Egypt with clear corporate vision to expand beyond our region to Africa we are already taking steps in that direction through hospitality exhibitions, tourism conferences and by partnering with private investors or tourism boards.

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Time Hotels milestones: 

TIME Express Hotel brand introduced in 2014.

10 pc of employees have spent over 10 years with the company.

TIME Hotels is Middle East’s first hotel stay carbon offset programme achieving 326 tonnes in just over nine months.

Opened first hotel run by female management in the region, TIME Asma Hotel in 2020.

Expansion of portfolio beyond MENA region to Indian Ocean in Mauritius in 2020.

Maintained International Sustainability Hotel Certification, Green Keys, for the last 10 years.