Bahrain's hotel pipeline currently has 15 four- and five-star hotel projects with 5,100 guestrooms, according to a report by property expert CBRE. TradeArabia reported that the development of the new hotels slated to open by 2022 will cost over $10 billion.
Over the next five years, Bahrain is set to get The One&Only Resort, Wyndham Grand Hotel, Fairmont Vida Hotel & Resort, Ibis Hotel and Pullman Hotel brands. They will increase the kingdom's current 190-hotel and resort inventory with 18 five-star hotels, 48 four-star hotels, 35 three-star hotels, 81 serviced apartments and 11 resorts.
The Wyndham Grand Manama, one of the new hotels in the construction pipeline, will have 19 floors of the Landmark Tower in Bahrain. Guestrooms will take up 14 of those floors.
"The region is seeing an influx of new hotel rooms in spite of reduced demand and prolonged economic challenges primarily as a result of deflated oil prices," Heather Longden, AD at CBRE Bahrain, stated in the report. "The majority of hotel rooms available in the Bahrain market in 2016 were in the four-star market constituting 43 percent of total room supply."
The Bahrain Tourism and Exhibition Authority told TradeArabia that 12.3 million tourists visited the Kingdom in 2016, a 6-percent jump from 2015. The majority of hotel room demand came from day trips and short visits from Saudi Arabia over the King Fahad Causeway, which totaled 88 percent. The region's current hotel occupancy in 2016 to date totaled 60 percent, compared to 53 percent for Manama, Bahrain.