Fractional Ownership News

Dubai set for growth in fractional ownership

The struggling whole ownership market in Dubai could be the ideal background for a surge in Dubai fractional ownership as developers look to shared ownership models, according to Group RCI Middle East managing director Jeff Tisdall.

Speaking to Hotelier Middle East, Tisdall said: "The cooling of the Dubai property market and the approaching completion of flagship tourist developments has ironically created significant opportunity and intensified interest in vacation ownership and private residence clubs. Today's market for leisure real estate is quickly moving from its investor orientation of recent years towards an end-user and leisure focus. By creating ownership interests that offer an annual allotment of personal usage to match consumer needs, shared ownership is the ultimate end-user product."

Tisdall said that shared ownership has a very important role to play in ushering in a new area of growth and development in Dubai. "It makes the emirate a more accessible tourist destination. Moreover, it will provide developers with an important strategy for monetising unsold inventory and offer operators a means of building occupancies and year-round usage. The fundamentals are in place to make Dubai a world leader in shared ownership. When identifying promising markets we look for: a variety of attractions and world-class tourist amenities, strong hotel ADRs and occupancies, relatively-flat seasonality, leisure-travel oriented venues that are pedestrian-friendly and affluent travellers. All of these prerequisites for success are in place in Dubai."

"Ironically, the events of the last year have served to increase the scale of the opportunity in Dubai. As the property market has cooled, mixed-use developers have had to look beyond residential whole ownership as the anchor of their business plans. Shared ownership is an attractive alternative for such developers and meets an important set of consumer needs. It's interesting to note that conditions in Dubai today mirror those that initially gave rise to the emergence of the shared ownership industry in the US in the 1970s," added Tisdall.

www.grouprci.com

31/08/09