Kuwait Hotel Owners Association hosted the first workshop organized in Kuwait by US- based Smith Travel Research Company (STR) with the participation of owners and general managers of hotels and hotel institutions.

The workshop was held in Regency Hotel and was attended by hotels’ sales, marketing and revenue managers. The workshop discussed ‘ways of laying out visions, targets, plans and best benchmarking practices in hotel management, as well as evaluating the sector’s performance in the Middle East, with Kuwait taking up a substantial part of the discussions.’

The workshop was followed by the signing of a cooperation protocol between Hotel Owners Association and the Smith Travel Research Co. which will provide the sector with travel data from and to Kuwait and the region to utilize in consolidating hotel occupancy in Kuwait. The Smith Travel Research is an American company based in Hendersonville, Tennessee. It has a profound experience of over 32 years in tracking and analyzing supply and demand data of various travel markets including the international hotel industry.  STR boasts a membership of over 50 thousand hotels and provides information on over 6.8 million hotel rooms in the world. The company incorporates several subsidiaries which feed its objectives of helping the growth of travel and hospitality for its clients.

A statement by the Hotel Owners Association mentioned that “the workshop offered a meeting opportunity for the hotel sector decision makers and a venue for exchanging views and discussions about the trends, challenges and changes in the hotel market performance.” It stressed the importance of such workshops and meetings “in view of the strong competition of the hospitality industry in the region, particularly in the GCC countries.”

The Association statement pointed out the Kuwaiti hotel sector witnessed in the past years a large increase in investments with the opening of new hotels in various parts of the country with the targeted customers, especially the accommodation market, remaining largely unchanged. This posed many challenges relating to the percentage of hotel occupancy and the average hotel room profit. It added that  “ as a result of the weak external promotion of visiting Kuwait as a tourist attraction, Kuwaiti hotels are inclined to take charge of the sector’s business alone waiting for government plans to strengthen growth indicators, particularly ways of utilizing the travel and flights data in the occupancy percentages and commensurate pricing of the services of our hotels which enjoy the highest standards of quality and excellence as attested to by international benchmark certificates.”

The statement added: “ the ability to reconcile various planning ingredients to the requirements of profitability is essential at this stage. The workshop has undoubtedly provided great assistance to the sector in general and to all hotels towards improving performance and its direct and long-term returns. Surely the Cooperation Protocol signed recently between the Association representing Kuwaiti hotels and the American company will be an important factor in how all participating hotels will benefit from the travelers and hotels data in the region in general.”