Emaar Hospitality, a unit of Dubai's biggest listed developer, is eyeing 20 European cities for new hotels and planning to enter sub-saharan Africa as part of its international expansion push, its chief executive said on Sunday.
The hotels arm of developer Emaar Properties has identified first-tier European cities, including London, Paris, Rome and Munich, as growth opportunities, Olivier Harnisch said at a press conference at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai. The company will “soon” announce its plans for sub-Saharan Africa and is exploring plans for hotels in Muscat and Salalah in Oman, he added.
Emaar Hospitality has a pipeline of 35 projects in the Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey and the Maldives, bringing the total number of destinations in which it operates to 58 markets, he said.
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The expansion push will be a combination of both managing and building hotels, with the majority of projects skewed towards management, Mr Harnisch said. Most of the projects will be funded either by Emaar Capital or through joint ventures with real estate companies and funds.
The company, which operates hotels including The Address and Rove, has not seen any impact from VAT introduced in the UAE in January, Mr Harnisch said.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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