Middle East & Africa commitment confirmed with enlarged Dubai presence  

We recently confirmed our commitment to our partners in the Middle East and Africa region with the opening of a new and enlarged office in Dubai.

During the last two years, the company has tripled the size of its local team for the region – following the acquisitions of Tourico Holidays and GTA – and recently decided to unify the teams into one single space in Dubai.

This enlarged presence in the city forms part of Hotelbeds’ long-standing commitment to the Middle East region, with GTA opening its first office in Dubai in 1998 and Hotelbeds establishing its regional office in Dubai in 2012.

The new office accommodates around 200 people and includes the sourcing, wholesale sales, retail, operations and finance teams.

Ali Taheri, Sourcing Director for the Middle East and Africa regions at Hotelbeds added: “Years ago, we did not exist in Middle East. We started indirectly contracting the Middle East region and then directly contracting with our suppliers a couple of years after, always with Dubai as our regional hub. Our success in the region has been a matter of time and careful planning.

“Today we have a headcount of over 200 in our newly opened Dubai office and have staff on the ground in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Riyadh, Jeddah, Makkah, Madinah, Riyadh, Kuwait, Beirut, Amman, Muscat, and many more.

“After many years of activity in the region, I’m proud to say that we are one of the very few, perhaps the only B2B bedbank, capable of delivering an even flow of room nights to this region regardless of seasonality. To take the issue of seasonality out of the Middle East, one needs access to 140+ source markets. And now, following the completion of the integration and operating as one consolidated company, we feel we have assembled incredible distribution firepower to marry Middle East’s excess inventory with the international demand.”