Rotana Hotels has reached an arrangement with Summit Hotels to manage a 5-star property in Baghdad, Iraq which is scheduled to open in 2012.

The hotel is the company’s first luxury-brand in Iraq and is located in the Green Zone, the heavily guarded diplomatic/government area in central Baghdad.

The hotel will include 250 rooms and suites, Club Rotana Executive floors, a multitude of restaurants and bars, confrence and banquet facilities and complete recreational areas.

Selim El Zyr, President & CEO of Rotana, said: “We are proud to have been chosen to manage this new spectacular 5-star property and our team is very excited about the opportunity to be in Baghdad for the first time. We are confident that we will introduce a new dimension of hospitality in the country. This new agreement is part of our strategic aim to have a property located in every key city in the Middle East and this goal is being steadily achieved through careful long-term planning and timely action.”

Vie Hotel, the first new international hotel to launch in Bangkok in 2009, is hoping to bring life to the city’s tourism industry. 

Vie, french for “life”, if the fisrt MGallery Hotel in Asia, and follows the launch of the brand in Australia and New Zealand last year.

Built on the site of a former cinema and flanked by top retail outlets, the hotel achieves boutique elegance through stylish interiors and chic design that features colourful Thai silk and soft furnishings with contrasting dark coconut wood furniture and hard wood flooring, creating a warm and inviting ambience. Generous windows from all 154 spacious rooms and suites showcase the Bangkok skyline, while the bathrooms are designed for full functionality with a separate shower and bath.

A four-storey “cube” at the front of the hotel contains the VIE 39 Exclusive Club, where  VIE Cigar and VIE Wine provide an extensive selection of cigars and wines, topped with a rooftop swimming pool. Stylish contemporary cuisine can be found at VIE Dining, an all-day-dining venue in a chic setting with eleventh floor views of the Bangkok skyline.

For the hospitality sector in the Middle East, 2008 was, if not a great year, a good one, remaining mostly insulated from the impact of the global financial meltdown.

The sector has enjoyed high room occupancy rates throughout 2008 as more hotels opened and other upcoming projects remained on schedule.

Dubai is said to have the world’s highest occupancy rates at 85%. The figures from the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) indicate that hotels in DUbai registered average occupancy rates of 83.2%.

The number of hotels that were built also increased, from 439 in 2007 to 482 in 2008, for a total of 30,306 rooms in 2008 compared to 26,771 in 2007.

The Deloitte report said: “Abu Dhabi reported a 39.9 per cent change in revenue per room in the first nine months of the year, followed by Oman with 32.9 per cent and Saudi Arabia with 23.1 per cent, while Dubai grew 4.7 per cent.

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