Oil prices may be languishing lately, but the situation was quite different in the 1970s: “You have to see it to believe it,” Service World International Publisher Fergus McKeever reported on the explosive growth of the Middle East—and the demand for hotel rooms that went with it.
McKeever’s 1975 “tour mission” to Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Tehran and Istanbul was documented in a story in the July/August issue that breathlessly listed the many opportunities for hoteliers and foodservice companies that could cash in on the spiking, and rising, oil prices of the mid-1970s.
Some Western companies already had footholds: Mövenpick had opened in Beirut, and both Sheraton and Hilton were expanding in Cairo and planning outposts in Egypt. As well, “the Playboy Clubs may make a debut in the Persian Gulf area,” the story reported—no word on whether that panned out. The Inter-Continental had just announced a new luxury property—14 stories high!—in Sharjah, UAE.
While the story focuses on Algeria, Egypt, Iran and Iraq, among other countries, it left a few familiar places as afterthoughts: Abu Dhabi, and a single mention of a little place called Dubai—one of the fastest-growing tourism and hotel markets in the past ten years.
Read last week’s #throwbackthursday, a weekly feature celebrating the 50th anniversary of HOTELS.