“2020 is going to be a fun year for us,” states Rotana CEO Guy Hutchinson. “We will start with a couple of openings in Saudi Arabia. While we’re quite developed in the traditional cities of Riyadh and Jeddah, these two openings will be in the Eastern province. Saudia Arabia is opening, growing and changing at an amazing pace, and I think we’re going to see a lot of tourism into the kingdom.”
As far as expanding west in European cities, however, Rotana is non-committal, “For us its important to grow in hubs, we never want standalone or isolated hotels because then we can’t service them in the way that we want to. The ability to service those hotels in detail is critical. That’s what makes us different, and we need to maintain that point of differentiation,” commented Hutchinson.
Rotana Hotel Management operates a portfolio of over 100 properties in 26 cities throughout the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. It was founded in 1992 by Nasser Al Nowais and Selim El Zyr and is headquartered in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Current CEO Guy Hutchinson joined the company in 2014 as its COO. He was previously an executive with Hilton, most recently serving as Vice President of Operations India before joining Rotana.
