Tuesday, November 5, 2013

What difference does a year make in a hotel’s life? (The nark’s second site visit to an HLG site in Abu Dhabi in as many days….)

Do hotel operators get too bothered if they do not open on time?
Maybe not that much if they part of a big group like Novotel is. (ref 1);
And depending on the original contract with the developer it may suit them quite nicely to open a year-or-two later than planned, who knows, I’m not an expert in running franchise hotels.
I’m more interested in when the Al Bustan-Novotel in Abu Dhabi is going to get really and officially opened from the point of HLG’s (or HEE’s) ability to get to the end of their own contract of constructing the Al Bustan building complex this hotel is residing in.

I will not reveal a big secret if I state that ever since the job started sometime in 2008, the proposed completion date was always a bit fluid for the Al Bustan complex, built by HLG (ref 2) in Abu Dhabi.
My husband was teaching in the neighbouring school in 2010 and it was already known then by the general public that the job was a ‘problematic’ one.

I did work on the site personally for some time later and claim to have gained quite a deep level of intimate knowledge of the project, that surpasses the combined understanding of all of the HLG/HEE Project Directors employed on this job (and there were many) – yet, just to keep the suspense and stay on this side of confidentiality for now, I will reveal none of that.

But as we glide past the construction crew on this brief site visit with my husband today, and I watch those guys that could be putting the finishing touches on this project quite close to my heart I do wonder, how come the HLG’s PR team had not taken the effort to synchronise the numbers on their own website with the hotel’s ones, (ref 3) – and show Projected opening for December 2013, but claim to have finished the project in 2012?

Both companies will be employing creative economics and report-writing to justify to their share-holders the hold-ups of 1-2 or more years, so a reasonable person would expect them to at least be on the same calendar? Wouldn’t you?

Refs:



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