Ennismore has signed an agreement with Dubai based developer Select Group to open The Hoxton, Dubai Media City, taking the Shoreditch born hotel brand into the United Arab Emirates for the first time. The deal marks The Hoxton’s Middle East debut and gives Ennismore a new flagship in the region.
Dubai remains one of the most heavily used long haul destinations for UK companies, whether for regional headquarters visits, exhibitions or stopovers en route to Asia and Australia. The signing adds a mid market lifestyle option to a city where corporate rates have been pushed steadily upwards by luxury supply, and it lands in a district that many UK visitors already have on their itinerary.
What The Hoxton Dubai will offer
The hotel will have 230 guest rooms and has been designed by AIME Studios, Ennismore’s in house interior design team. Rather than a new build, the project is an extensive reworking of an existing building through a multi million Dirham transformation, repositioning it as what the company describes as a new generation Hoxton that reflects both the brand’s character and that of Dubai Media City.
Food and drink will be curated by Paris Society, the collective behind several of Dubai’s better known restaurant and nightlife venues. Two concepts are new. Onaka, a Japanese handroll bar, is a collaboration with the award winning French restaurateur Moise Sfez, while Bleachers is a social sports bar built around gameday culture. They will sit alongside Il Bambini Club, Paris Society’s trattoria concept already running in London, Paris and Cape Town, and Tope, The Hoxton’s rooftop restaurant found in Barcelona, Portland and Brussels, serving Mexican inspired food and cocktails.
The lobby follows the brand’s usual open house approach, functioning as a public space for guests and local workers alike, with cultural programming, pop ups and collaborations alongside all day food. For travellers who prefer to work outside their room between meetings, that has been one of the brand’s more useful features in its European properties.
A wellness club rather than a hotel gym
The most notable element for frequent travellers is The Hoxton’s first wellness club, which debuts here and is being positioned as a social hub in its own right. It will include a large gym floor and movement studios, spa treatment rooms, contrast therapy facilities and a members’ lounge, finished in the residential style the brand uses elsewhere. A healthy cafe concept called Beaum will sit within it.
The club is intended for the surrounding community as well as hotel guests, which in practice means a busier and better equipped facility than the token treadmill room that many business hotels still offer. Contrast therapy, meaning hot and cold recovery, is a useful addition for anyone landing off a seven hour flight with a morning of meetings ahead.
A base in Dubai’s media and technology cluster
Dubai Media City sits at the centre of the emirate’s innovation corridor and is home to media companies, production studios and digital businesses, making it a logical base for UK visitors in marketing, broadcasting and technology. It is bordered by Dubai Marina, Palm Jumeirah and Jumeirah Lake Towers, so onward travel to meetings across the western half of the city is straightforward. Anyone planning a first trip may find our guide to Dubai’s business districts and commercial hubs a useful starting point.
The signing follows a run of activity for the brand in Asia Pacific, with The Hoxton, Bengaluru City in India signed in October and Melbourne agreed the year before. Ennismore has also been busy in Europe, including the signing of The Hoxton, Madrid.
The Hoxton was created in London’s Shoreditch and developed by Sharan Pasricha into a group that now runs 19 hotels across the UK, Europe and the United States. Openings are lined up in Melbourne, Oslo, Nashville, Mexico City and Bengaluru, so the Dubai property joins a pipeline that is stretching the brand well beyond its original European base.
No opening date has been confirmed.
