THE MIDDLE EAST GOES BACK TO ITS
Glamping Roots
Chris Nader
The pandemic affected hospitality all over the world and the Middle East was no exception. However, while some coastal resorts had to offer incentives to fill rooms, the glamping sector was bucking the trend. Chris Nader is one of the few hospitality experts who focuses on the glamping movement in the MENA region. Steph Curtis-Raleigh caught up with Chris about developments in the region and what a Middle Eastern staycationer is looking for.
Chris Nader has been in the industry for about 14 years and hails from a family involved in the hotel industry. His first move to the Middle East followed his MBA from the Lausanne hotel school in Switzerland. He joined Kempinski Hotels who had launched a new brand called Shaza Hotels focusing on the luxury Middle Eastern market. “My journey started there, launching the brand and finding investors to develop culturally-sensitive hotels in the region. We had to create everything from scratch, including positioning, branding, concepts. Many years later, when we first started speaking about canvas tents, people thought it was like camping, sharing a bathroom with others. I told them – no, it’s like a luxury villa, but instead of concrete walls, it was canvas. These tents could achieve rates of £300-£500 a night, but few investors believed me.” Nader realised that the timing was right – people were more interested in getting back to nature and of course the region has a history of tented camps dating back to the Bedouins, so many were also going back to their roots. “During the weekdays, the few glamping resorts in the UAE started getting really full. And I saw most of them continuing to be full
throughout 2020,” says Nader. “It was just unbelievable, while other types of hospitality assets in the region were struggling, glamping resorts were witnessing very high room rates. Nader is now an independent consultant in the field of glamping and experiential hospitality in the Middle East but it was the Whitepod project in Switzerland which really sparked his passion when he stayed at the resort in 2011. “Whitepod was a ground-breaking project in the mid-2000s,” says Chris. “Bringing similar concepts to the Middle East would have been great at that time, but investors were not ready yet for such an alternative resort.” Nader enjoys the challenges of bringing the luxurious hotel experience to a tented camp. “You can’t use the same materials in construction, you can’t use the same standard operating procedures. Plus, what was very interesting was that the environmental restrictions in which such projects are built, forcing us to be very creative, and we try to adjust and adapt,” he says. If the room rates seem incredibly high, it’s worth remembering that in the region there is no income tax, and many people earn comfortable salaries, so the domestic market
has a high propensity to spend, including for staycations. With many people choosing to live on the coast, Nader says the attraction of glamping is to go to remote locations, especially the desert and mountains. “People want new experiences. Mainstream resorts are more predictable. There is rarely an element of surprise. First of all, these resorts are mostly on the coasts of the UAE where most of us live. So, when you go there on a staycation you don’t really feel like you are on holiday as you have the same backdrop, you are in your own backyard,” he says. “So taking people up on a mountain, or down in the desert and giving them this luxury experience – it’s really interesting to a lot of residents.” The trend for luxury desert eco-focused resorts actually started even before glamping. “About 20 years ago, we started seeing some very interesting resorts in the deserts. And these are not at all glamping. They’re actually concrete constructions with various types of units. They became very popular and some of them had some sort of sustainability elements to them as well. They were an instant success and remain very popular to this day.” “And then slowly, around three years ago, the first few projects that had a glamping element
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