Dubai has world's second-largest hotel construction project pipeline

Dubai had a pipeline of 168 hotel construction projects with 49,950 rooms as of 2018, ranking it second in the list of global cities with the largest hospitality pipelines, only behind New York City's 171 hotels with 29,460 rooms. Here's what our sister concern Construction Week Online has reported.

Lodging Econometrics’ year-end Global Construction Project Trend Report found that the number of hotel construction projects globally increased by 7% in 2018, marking "a record high" for the world, with 13,573 projects currently in the pipeline. Simultaneously, room numbers showed an upward trend, with an annual increase of 6% to 2.3 million rooms in 2018.

Four of the seven global regions – including Europe, Africa, Middle East, and Asia Pacific – reached all-time highs in 2018. Lodging Econometrics found that 6,352 hotels, with 1.1 million rooms, are currently under construction in the world, and 3,860 projecs (572,490 rooms) are due to start construction in the next 12 months.

The US tops the list of countries with the highest number of projects, and had 5,530 schemes with 669,460 rooms under construction by the end of 2018. China follows the US on the list, with its 2,761 projects and 580,640 rooms taking it to an "all-time high", according to Lodging Econometrics.

American hotel projects make up 41% of the global construction pipeline, while China accounts for 20%.

In November 2018, the UAE led the Middle East's hotel construction with 223 projects comprising 63,734 rooms, which is roughly around 36% of the region’s Q3 2018 pipeline of 617 projects.

Among the under-construction Dubai hotels that due to open in 2020 is the Double Tree by Hilton hotel in Al Mankhool. The 458-key facility will be operated by family-owned AW Rostamani Group, as Construction Week reported in January 2019.