Jumeirah Group is to manage a luxury apartment property on Park Lane in London.
The Grosvenor House Apartments, which have undergone an internal rebuilding and refurbishment, will open under Jumeirah's management within the next few months, the Dubai-based hospitality group said yesterday.
The announcement follows the opening by the luxury hotel group of hotels in China, Frankfurt in Germany and in the Maldives this year.
The London property's 133 apartments range from studios through to five-bedroom penthouses.
"The Grosvenor House apartments are in a world-famous location and this is an excellent win for Jumeirah," said Mark Wynne-Smith, the regional chief executive of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. "The market demand for this type of product is increasing in London and it is particularly popular with guests from the Middle East."
Jumeriah manages several hotels in Dubai including the Burj Al Arab. Last week it opened its first hotel in Abu Dhabi, the Jumeirah at Etihad Towers.
The London apartment building was originally built in the 1920s. Jumeirah said the building is owned by Grosvenor House Apartments Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Park Lane Properties, which is majority owned by a consortium of Kuwait-based companies, including The Investment Dar, Adeem Investment & Wealth Management Company, and Stehwaz Holding.
It will open under the name Grosvenor House Apartments by Jumeirah Living.
Jumeirah already manages two hotels in London - the Jumeirah Carlton Tower in Knightsbridge and Jumeirah Lowndes Hotel in Belgravia. It also manages the Essex House hotel in New York.
Occupancy levels at hotels in the UK reached 82.3 per cent in September, up 1.7 per cent on the same month last year, according to STR Global, a research firm based in London.
The wave of openings by Jumeirah Group this year comes after several years of inactivity in terms of new launches overseas, despite having several management contracts signed.
Jumeirah plans to manage resorts in locations including Anguilla in the Caribbean and Baku in Azerbaijan, and Thailand, as well as having about half a dozen contracts signed for properties in China.
Jumeirah in January said it was cutting jobs at a group and corporate level as it expanded internationally and put a regional structure in place.
