Chronicle No. 57 · People
The Hotel in the Desert: Khalaf Al Habtoor's Bet on an Empty Road
In 1979 he opened a hotel on a stretch of sand outside Dubai. That sand is now Sheikh Zayed Road.
Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor was born in 1949 in Al Shindagha, the old creekside quarter of Dubai, the son of a pearl and gold trader. He attended Al Sha'ab School in Deira and went to work at fourteen.
In the late 1960s he was employed by Mohammed Saeed Al Mulla's firm in Abu Dhabi. In 1970 he started a construction company of his own - the origin of the Al Habtoor Group.
Construction taught him the city's direction of travel before the city knew it. In 1979 he opened his first hotel, The Metropolitan, on what was then a remote stretch of what became Sheikh Zayed Road. At the time it was one of only a handful of hotels in the emirate, and for years it stood essentially alone on the corridor between the Dubai World Trade Centre and Abu Dhabi.
- The Metropolitan became a genuine social hub for residents as well as travellers, which is rarer and harder than it sounds
- It anchored a road that became Dubai's central axis
- It was demolished in May 2013 to make way for Al Habtoor City, home to the St Regis, Westin and W Dubai hotels
- In 2013 he established the Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor Foundation, endowed with a 20 per cent stake in the group
The original hotel is gone; the Metropolitan name has since reopened elsewhere on the same road.
Most hoteliers buy into a location once it is proven, and pay for the privilege. Al Habtoor's career is a reminder that the other route exists: read the ground, open early, and be patient enough to still be there when the city arrives.
Lesson: Location is not a fact you inherit; sometimes it is a forecast you make and then wait out.
