The famous Hilton company, which is active in the hotel industry, plans to add 90 more hotels to the existing 179 hotels in the Middle East, Africa and Turkey. An event that is considered as a major development in the tourism sector in the region.
Euronews’ Sarah Hedley Hymers spoke with Joken Slifer, Hilton’s Head of Middle East, Africa and Turkey.
that in:
It is as follows:
Hello, welcome to our program. I’m joined on this program by Jockman, who oversees a portfolio of 179 hotels and 30,000 employees. Joken, you are on the verge of doubling your number of hotels in the next five years. Can you tell me what challenges come with such rapid growth? The Middle East has been a very attractive market and a real growth engine for us over the past two years. This is a place where we can build more hotels because people like to travel there. So we’re going to double our portfolio, actually more than double, because we’re going to record a 140% increase. We currently operate more than 60 hotels and are going to add 90 more. So it’s a really big market for us. I would say the business side is probably the most challenging aspect of the business, but we have a great pool of talent and bold people. We are often recognized as the best place to work and are ranked in the top four for work
Has Europe played an important role in reviving your career after the pandemic? Europe has always been important in this part of the region. In particular, Britain, France, Italy and Germany have played an important role, and after the pandemic, the Czech Republic and Switzerland were also added to it. Therefore, this market has always been a very important market. I think this area was known as a winter sun destination and people came here to sunbathe in the winter. But now, with the participation of countries, a destination has been created that is open all year round, and after the pandemic, we see people who want to travel to these places, and if not all, at least many people, Dubai or the UAE are on their top list. They came here after the pandemic, which really affected our business.
Well, the Middle East region is a very interesting region. This is a diverse area. If I look at North Africa, especially Morocco, where we started just a few years ago with a few hotels, we are growing really fast. We have been in Egypt for over 50 years, so we have a strong foothold there. If we look at the UAE, this country is our biggest market in the Middle East and North Africa region. We also have the largest growth market in Saudi Arabia. So, there’s a lot of growth happening in that area and I think it’s going to accelerate in the future because, you know, people really want to travel here. So this is a really important part of our business.
We are up 68% year-over-year and 4% ahead of 2019 annual revenue. So we’ve done really well. The Middle East is an important market for Europe. Immigrants living in the Middle East, as well as people there, travel to Europe in the summer, and this trend reverses in the winter. Therefore, another reason for the importance of having a hotel in this area is that people are familiar with the different brands that we have. When they travel to Europe, they stay with us again./Euronews
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