At the recent World Travel Market in London, Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, awarded the prize for the "fastest growing hotel chain in the Middle East" to Jean Gabriel Pérès, President and CEO of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts (MH&R). The prestigious award was sponsored by "Middle East Travel", the leading business travel magazine in the region.

Since 2002 alone, the portfolio of the international Swiss-based hotel chain has grown with additional hotels in Beirut/Lebanon, Cairo Media-City/ Egypt, in Madinah and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and MH&R has added 1140 rooms. New hotels in Bahrain, El Alamein and Taba in Egypt will open in the coming months. Furthermore, management contracts have already been signed for new hotels in Jeddah, Dubai, Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia and Sanaa in Yemen for an additional 1874 rooms.

"Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts' success story in the Middle East began as early as 1976 with the Mövenpick Resort at the pyramids in Cairo. Since then, we've created an excellent reputation throughout the region and are highly regarded for our Swiss quality and constant performance in the hospitality business. Our new hotels in Egypt and the Gulf States show the strong acceptance of our brand", explains Jean Gabriel Pérès. "With the dedicated support of our minority shareholder, Kingdom Hotel Investment Group, MH&R continues to pursue its successful expansion strategy in the Middle East, as well as in Europe, Africa and the Mediterranean basin".

Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts currently enjoys international representation with 49 hotels in 15 countries, and its two hotel types, the business and conference hotel and the holiday resort, are completely oriented to the specific needs of our guests. While the business hotels are located near cities or airports and provide an optimum infra-structure for the business traveller, the holiday resorts are located at unusual sites: at present the hotel group is represented in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and in Lebanon. 14 more projects are under development or in the process of construction.