Beach hotels in Dubai are looking forward to a successful Eid this year, with Atlantis, The Palm renting almost all of its 1,539 rooms for the festival. Reservations staff said yesterday that tomorrow night was fully booked, with only 15 of the more expensive Imperial Club rooms available for tonight. Business at the hotel has been boosted by its launch of an Eid getaway promotion, which includes entry to its Eid Cool Summer Nights event at its Aquaventure Waterpark.
"The majority of our guests are coming from across the GCC to celebrate Eid at Atlantis," said Brett Armitage, the senior vice president of sales at Atlantis, The Palm. Mr Armitage said more business was likely to be generated by non-guests visiting its restaurants and Aquaventure. The Tamani Hotel in Dubai Marina said it was also full for the weekend, helped by its location near the beach. "There's very high demand coming from within the UAE," said Muin Serhan, the general manager at the hotel.
About 70 per cent of its guests for Eid were from within the country, he said. The Amwaj Rotana at Jumeirah Beach Residence said 88 per cent of its rooms were booked for Eid. "We're expecting a lot of last-minute bookers from the local market," said Danielle Aychouh, the director of marketing and communications at Amwaj Rotana. Ms Aychouh said the hotel was expecting bookings from other emirates, such as Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, as people looked for an escape but did not want to travel abroad because Eid this year is towards the end of the summer holidays.
But hotels located away from the beach in the city said they had not seen such high demand for their rooms. "Business is quite slow compared to last year," said Syed Zulfiqar Mehdi, the sales director at the Samaya hotel in Deira. "Due to the increased numbers of hotels, rates have been slashed down tremendously in order to cope with the stiff competition." In Abu Dhabi, hotels are expecting demand to be subdued during Eid because the emirate is more dependent on business travel.
"It's a quieter period than normal," said Sid Sattanathan, the general manager at Holiday Inn Abu Dhabi. Mr Sattanathan said he was expecting increased demand in the last quarter of the year, with a good amount of business already on the books for next month and November. @Email:rbundhun@thenational.ae