Melia Adds Two Hotels in Dubai & Marrakesh
Date: April 2018
Location: Desert Palm, Dubai, UAE and Palmarie, Marrakesh (18 km from the airport)
Name: Desert Palm Dubai Hotel and the Sol Marrekesh Hotel
No. of Keys: Dubai – 38 spacious rooms, suites and villas, as well as a wide range of dining and wellness facilities and a horse riding school and first-class polo field….next door, The Desert Palm Polo Club, with four polo fields, is the very best polo estate in the region, helping reinforce the position of Dubai on the international polo circuit.
The hotel will join the stable of of Melia luxury boutique hotels worldwide, such as the Meliá Colbert, Meliá Champs Elysées or Meliá Vendome in Paris, or the Meliá Campione and Meliá Villa Capri in Italy, among others.
Marrekesh: 211 rooms (including 25 family units) and 6 hectares of indoor and outdoor space. Upon completion, the services will include a spa with Hammam, fitness facilities, four tennis courts, a volleyball court, a soccer pitch, golf practice area and a swimming pool with a sundeck.
With its own nightclub, a theatre and two bars, as well as a Kids Club. The Sol Marrakesh was a well-known resort opened in 1988, currently closed and will re-open in 2018.
Owner/Developer: Dubai – Albwardy Investment Group, with whom the Spanish company already operates three other hotels in Tanzania and Argentina. Besides Melia, they also are opening the Hatt Regency Arusha, the Hyatt Regency Addis Ababa and the Four Seasons at Desroches Island in the Seychelles.
For Gabriel Escarrer, Executive Vice President and CEO of Meliá Hotels International, “taking over operations at this exclusive Dubai resort makes us very proud and also gives us a chance to demonstrate our proven excellence in the management of luxury urban resorts in a market to which the company is already firmly committed”.
Albwardy Investment is a UAE based holding company founded in the mid 1970’s by Mr Ali Saeed Juma Albwardy. The group has since grown to have a global reach, operating in over 20 countries, with a combined workforce of over 10,000.
With an annual turnover exceeding one billion US dollars, they operate in a number of diverse and complementing business sectors ranging from food distribution and retail, construction, shipyards, hospitality and hotel ownership. They represent many international leading brands through exclusive distribution, operating and partnership agreements.
Marrakesh: Meliá has also announced an agreement to add the Sol Marrakesh, the fifth hotel for the group in Morocco, which will operate under the brand Sol by Meliá, the family-friendly holiday resort brand.
THPT Comment: Good to see Melia on the move again…been fairly quiet of late. Founded in 1956 in Palma de Mallorca (Spain), Meliá Hotels International is one of the largest holiday hotel companies in the world, as well as a major player in the Spanish market, both in leisure and business. It currently has more than 370 hotels distributed in 43 countries on 4 continents, marketed under the following brands: Gran Meliá, Meliá, Paradisus Resorts, ME by Meliá, Innside by Meliá, TRYP by Wyndham, Sol Hotels and Club Meliá.
First Seen: Melia website