Sotheby’s sells cars, jewelry, handbag at Abu Dhabi auction
Sotheby’s first Abu Dhabi Collectors’ Week raised $133 million from a series of auctions, including sports cars, jewelery and a Hermès handbag owned by Jane Birkin, which went for $2.9 million.
Among the most jaw-dropping sales was a 31.68-karat pink diamond that sold for $8.8 million and a 1994 McLaren F1 car for $25.3 million.
The glitzy event, held at the St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort last week, fortuitously coincided with the Milken Middle East and Africa Summit, an event known for attracting billionaires, held at the same venue.
Collectors’ Week, which included a showcase of $500 million worth of non-selling art, follows a $1 billion injection by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund ADQ for a minority stake in Sotheby’s.
Saudi Arabia sees growing market for concierge lifestyle managers
Saudi Arabia’s influx of senior executives and wealthy expatriates is driving growth in so-called concierge and lifestyle management services.
Less familiar in the West, concierge services are a popular luxury in the Gulf, easing the transition for new arrivals and helping them through anything from bureaucratic processes to finding a new home or transporting a pet.
“We brought people from our offices around the world working with young, brilliant, talented Saudis so that the service that you can expect when you arrive is really ticked off,” Sir Ben Elliot, founder of global luxury concierge firm Quintessentially, told Arab News during the TOURISE summit in Riyadh.
Elliot said the company is trying to accommodate customers in the ‘”avalanche of people” relocating to Saudi Arabia.
Dubai’s opulent Palazzo Versace up for sale, with $163 million starting price
Palazzo Versace Dubai, one of the most luxurious hotels in the UAE, is hitting the auction block with a starting price of $163 million, a figure significantly lower than its previous valuation of $380 million, after its owner ran into financial trouble.
Among the interested buyers is Swiss-Italian banker Christopher Aleo, who is planning a bold move through his New York-listed iSwiss Hedge Fund to bring in global investors.
More than just a real estate deal, this could mark a symbolic return of the opulent property to Italian hands, with Aleo aiming to blend luxury, heritage, and innovation in a refreshed vision for the hotel.
If it goes through, the acquisition could become one of 2025’s most talked-about deals in global hospitality and finance.
The hotel spans 130,000 square meters and features 215 rooms and suites, 169 private residences, and eight upscale restaurants and lounges along the shores of Dubai Creek.
Abu Dhabi’s Story hotels chief plots strategy from Seychelles to Mecca
From private island escapes in the Seychelles to luxury hotel towers under construction in Mecca, Story Hospitality is trying to build on its boutique niche in the UAE and expand to new markets.
Backed by Abu Dhabi Capital Group, one of the UAE’s largest family investment offices with $20 billion in assets under management, the company is looking to Saudi Arabia, Oman and other Gulf neighbors to build its brand regionally as it eyes more far-flung resort destinations in Africa.
CEO Victor Abou-Ghanem, who was born in Lebanon and learned the industry working at hotel icons such as the Dorchester Collection and Kempinski Hotels, said he isn’t chasing cookie-cutter growth as the company plots a strategy beyond its emirates base.
“We don’t copy-paste concepts,” the dapper 44-year-old executive said in an interview while attending last week’s Arabian Travel Market conference. “Every Story hotel is unique, with its own concept and narrative.”
Formerly known as H’Mark Hosts with its signature H Hotel in Dubai at the foot of Sheikh Zayed Road, the company rebranded in 2021 to roll out the 5-star line of Story hotels, while introducing a 4-star franchise under the name Cue Hotels. Story Hospitality expects to double its hotel count this year to 12, according to its website, with new locations in the Seychelles and near the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Is now a good time for Story Hospitality to open new hotels?
Absolutely! And this is happening globally, not just in one region. First, post-pandemic, people really wanted to travel again, and we saw a sharp increase in leisure travel. Any destination able to welcome leisure customers saw a boom.
Second, inflation has increased since the pandemic. Investing in real estate, especially hotels, is considered inflation-proof because you can pass some of those costs onto customers. Hotel rates are rising; they rarely go down, so as prices increase globally, we’re also able to increase our rates and maintain returns. Today, hotel investment remains attractive because it offers stable or even increasing returns despite inflation.
How does your connection with Abu Dhabi Capital Group help the hotel chain grow?
As their hospitality arm, we handle all hospitality-related and commercial building operations, whether through acquisition or development from scratch. We’ve done mixed-use projects with malls, offices, residences, and hotels. Sometimes we operate hotels only, or offices only — depending on the location and project. What’s unique is that each division, including Story Hospitality, defines its own growth and expansion plan. It’s not dictated by the holding group.
ADCG requires a certain return and growth – we decide how to achieve that. It’s like starting with a blank page – we own the strategy and execution.
Given your strong momentum, how is Story Hospitality positioning itself for expansion within the GCC?
We’re a GCC-rooted company with headquarters in Abu Dhabi, focused on having a strong presence in the region. UAE and Saudi Arabia are must-haves for us. We’re also active in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and soon Bahrain. The UAE is our base, and Saudi Arabia is where the real boom is happening, especially between now and 2030. Our first hotel in Mecca should open before the end of this year. We’re also exploring opportunities in Riyadh and the Red Sea. Importantly, we don’t just take any hotel and rebrand it. We find the right product that fits Story and only then do we put our name on it.
When evaluating new opportunities, what key criteria determine whether a hotel project aligns with the Story brand?
There are many criteria. First, we ensure we work with the right partners and owners.
Management agreements are long-term, 20 years or more, so aligning values and goals is essential. Second, we only choose destinations where we can operate successfully and outperform competitors. We assess KPIs such as location, demand, hotel supply, and whether it’s a leisure, religious, or business destination. We also consider the nature of the project — is it luxury, five-star, or lifestyle? From there, we define size, brand, and offering in collaboration with the owner.
Unlike others, we don’t copy-paste concepts. Every Story hotel is unique, with its own concept and narrative. We tailor each project to fit the owner’s vision, not the other way around.
Are you pursuing strategic partnerships with Gulf sovereign wealth funds or public investment entities?
We’re working on a few projects, though they’re still confidential. We’re actively engaged with at least one party, and if all goes well, you might hear an announcement within a month. The sovereigns are definitely of interest.
Story operates across both 5-star and 4-star segments. How do you ensure consistent quality and brand integrity?
It’s a tough question — what is luxury, really? Some people associate it with big rooms and marble finishes, and that’s part of it. For example, in Dubai, our hotel offers the largest standard rooms — 40-plus square meters, when the legal minimum is 25. That’s a choice we made.
We always ensure our hotels meet or exceed the country’s legal and classification requirements. But we don’t stop at the minimum, we do more.
Luxury today also means strong product quality and rich amenities: multiple restaurants, spas, pools, and wellness facilities like yoga or Pilates. Most importantly, luxury is about service, which is high-end, consistent, and people-driven. Our guest reviews on platforms like Booking.com and TripAdvisor speak to that. With the right location, product, and service, you can command high prices and retain customers. Without all three, you won’t.
As the GCC’s hotel market becomes more competitive, how do you attract, develop, and retain top-tier hospitality professionals?
It starts with the basics: treat people well. Just like with customers, we keep employees by taking care of them. That means being fair, giving them opportunities to grow, and offering training. At Story, we support career progression and international mobility. If someone wants to grow and travel, they can. Other companies may not provide that, you stay in your role or leave. For us, it’s not just about competitive salaries. It’s about learning.
We require at least two training sessions per year, especially for employees who use software. We offer both soft skills and technical skills training. We also promote from within and foster diversity, no discrimination based on nationality, religion, or gender. In Dubai, we’ve partnered with the government to train and employ autistic individuals. If someone is capable and willing, we’ll support them.
Mamilla Hotel, where luxury meets history in Jerusalem
JERUSALEM — It’s already a well-established landmark in modern-day Jerusalem, but the backstory of Mamilla, the swank outdoor shopping mall that leads from the Old City to the new, is perhaps best captured, and preserved, within the luxury boutique-style hotel that bookmarks the avenue’s western flank.
Opened more than a decade ago, the Mamilla Hotel is a rare journey into the history of a once-embattled Jerusalem neighborhood, a no-man’s land and a slum, that stood on the unstable seam line between the eastern and western sides of the city, between the watchful eyes of Israeli and Jordanian soldiers from 1948 to 1967.
The main part of the hotel is housed in what was once part of a cafeteria and science labs belonging to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is designed to take visitors on a journey through each of this holy city’s unique layers from the ancient through to the modern.
“Most of our guests arrive here from the airport, it is their first connection with Jerusalem and they can feel the city in the architecture and the design of the hotel,” Maia Wiener, Mamilla’s marketing manager, told The Circuit recently.
A trained tour guide, Wiener recounts Jerusalem’s various eras – Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, Crusader, Ottoman, Mameluke – and points to multiple artifacts and artworks, including photographs, maps and even the lights and chairs in the expansive lobby that were collated and are displayed to authentically represent Jerusalem’s rich past.
“We have four values in this hotel,” Wiener, who also manages Mamilla’s sister hotel, the nearby David’s Citadel, explained; “Location, luxury, holistic and joie de vivre, or a cheerful enjoyment of life… guests get to feel Jerusalem in all of these ways.”
One of the first neighborhoods built outside the walls of the Old City, Mamilla sits on what was the main road leading from the bustling port of Jaffa to what is called in English (and Hebrew) the Jaffa Gate. While its foundations date back some 2,000 years, during the 19th century as the Old City’s population expanded, Mamilla served as a busy commercial district with shops, banks and even a guesthouse where the founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, is said to have stayed on his visits to the city.
Most of the original structures in Mamilla were built in the mid-1880s by both Jews and Arabs, but following the announcement of the United Nations’ plan to create a Jewish state in Palestine in 1947, protests by local Arab residents destroyed many of the buildings and stores in Mamilla.
The neighborhood then became a dangerous no-man’s land until 1967, when Israel captured the holy city in the Six-Day War, unified it, declared sovereignty and put in motion plans to rehabilitate the entire area.
The outdoor mall, with its high-end stores and upscale restaurants, was developed by the Alrov Group and opened for business in 2007. The Mamilla Hotel, a cluster of older buildings with a new and modern façade, opened three years later at the far end. Both were designed by renowned Israeli architect Moshe Safdie, who oversaw the renovation of the handful of remaining 18th-century buildings.
The interior of the Mamilla Hotel was designed by Italian architect Pierro Lissoni, who is known for his fun contemporary works, a feature that is incorporated into the 194 modern-style guest rooms. High-tech features such as glass-walled bathrooms that turn opaque at the flick of a switch give the rooms a unique and novel twist.
Lissoni’s mixing of the old and the new is evident throughout the rest of the hotel, too. Part of the building’s original structure from the 1800s remains in the lobby, golden Jerusalem stones provide a warm touch to the business lounge on the first floor, and the wine cellar and popular Mirror Bar (which has yet to reopen since COVID-19 but which Wiener assures will happen very soon) on the second.
On the lower floors sit an indoor pool, a conference room and a huge dining room serving a rich Israeli-style breakfast buffet. A few floors above, adjacent to the outdoor mall, across a narrow footbridge, is the hotel’s Akasha spa and opposite is a fish restaurant cheesily called “Happy Fish.”
Probably the finest gem in this hotel, however, is at the top: the Rooftop restaurant. With breathtaking views of the ancient Old City walls, the elegant dining room provides an adventure in kosher cuisine and Israeli wines. Dishes ranging from sashimi salmon to goose breast to lamb chops and char-grilled entrecôte have been reimagined with a fresh and modern twist that gives diners both a historic and luxurious experience, just like the hotel itself.
The writer was a guest of the Mamilla Hotel. Price per room for one night starts at $430.
A luxury Golan Heights hotel is preserving history, layer by layer
GOLAN HEIGHTS – It’s not very often in Israel that you wake up to the sight of more than a dozen gleaming Ferraris, but then again, there aren’t too many places far enough from the country’s bustling center to warrant a serious road trip for the Italian power rides – or exclusive enough to draw in the owners of such luxury.
That’s why, on a recent weekday morning, the Ferrari Owners Club of Israel roared onto the grounds of the Pereh Hotel – the year-and-a-half-old luxury resort that sits quietly tucked away on the majestic Golan Heights – and parked their colorful cars for a rich and pampering breakfast in the hotel’s sweet-tasting Rouge restaurant.
With sweeping views of the Galilee, the Pereh Mountain Resort sits on an expansive plot of Israel’s most northern plateau. Far from the country’s obvious tourist spots in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, Pereh, which literally means wild in Hebrew, captures the raw and thorny beauty of the Golan Heights, while at the same time offering a tranquility that puts visitors immediately at one with nature.
It also captures a unique slice of history for Israel in particular and the broader region in general, with the hotel’s owner and an array of local designers working hard to preserve the past, while at the same time carefully adding a new layer of comfort and opulence.
In fact, sometimes it is hard to imagine, among the serenity and luxury, that this was once the scene of brutal conflict, wars and a geopolitical, colonial agreement that ultimately shaped the current Middle East.
Pereh stands along the old Haifa-Damascus Road at the site of what is known as the Upper or French Customs House. It was here in 1916 that the British and French diplomats, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, signed a secret treaty at the end of World War I carving up the former Ottoman Empire to create the borders of the countries we know today: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and what was British Mandated Palestine, now Jordan, Israel and the West Bank.
At the heart of the sprawling property, inside a ragged building that remains largely untouched, is a rudimentary museum paying homage to this game-changing agreement and to the creation of the hotel that now sits here.
An antique map with the demarcation lines and the original colonial contract hang without commentary high on scorched and peeling walls alongside black-and-white portraits of Sykes and Picot, as well as an ominous photograph of the handshake that essentially sealed the fate of the entire Middle East.
Nearby is a color photograph of Leo Glaser, Pereh’s founder and owner. A defense and security consultant, Glaser apparently became enchanted with the Golan Heights as a teenager in his native Buenos Aires after hearing the news that the notorious Israeli spy Eli Cohen had been hanged in Damascus, Syria. Cohen – who succeeded in infiltrating to the highest levels of the Syrian military before his execution in 1965 – quickly became Glaser’s hero and the impetus for his subsequent aliyah, and later a long military and secret service career.
It was also what pushed Glaser to purchase this parcel of land in 2014. According to legend, Cohen had succeeded in convincing the Syrian army to plant eucalyptus trees at army bases across the Golan, which was then in Syrian hands; he said it would keep the soldiers shielded from the sun. However, it is believed that knowing the location of these trees is what assisted the Israel Defense Forces in identifying Syrian military targets, allowing it to capture the area during the 1967 Six-Day war.
Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, a move still not accepted by most of the world, although the U.S., under former President Donald Trump, recognized Israel’s sovereignty there in a contentious 2019 declaration.
A cluster of Cohen’s eucalyptus trees, as well as several abandoned Syrian army bunkers beneath them, now stand on the horizon not far from the young grapefruit, pomelo and lemon trees in Pereh’s newly planted garden. Below their swaying branches is a small plaque that stands as a tribute to Cohen, whose remains are still said to be buried somewhere in Damascus.
“It was Cohen’s story that prompted Glaser to make aliyah and eventually buy this land,” Pereh’s general manager, Neri Eldar, tells The Circuit as we tour the hotel and the grounds.
Eldar explained that Glaser’s rough plan to turn it into a hotel was slowed by the process of clearing and cleaning up the abandoned and crumbling structures, removing leftover landmines and navigating the snake-filled, booby-trapped bunkers. It took Glaser nine years to restore the Bauhaus buildings that still stand here, remove the war debris and reimagine the wild, often hostile Golan landscape into a luxury resort.
With the help of investors, he finally opened the doors to Pereh in June 2021.
“The vibe here is very much connected to the natural surroundings,” said Eldar, describing how the hotel aims to mix history, nature and tranquility, with luxury and exclusivity.
“It’s an homage to nature,” she said.
A short stay at Pereh is a uniquely pleasurable experience. From the moment of arrival at the grand metal gates to the well-shaded and welcoming courtyard, replete with a fire pit and seating area, the resort is refreshing and inspiring.
Two of the original French buildings have been finely restored to contain the more exclusive rooftop studios and garden suites. Two new constructions with an additional 22 rooms – a mix of garden and balcony accommodations – surround a tranquil infinity pool and open-air whirlpool.
Each room combines locally found, natural materials – think recycled wood, iron and stone – in its design. Discarded Syrian army beds have been reimagined into lounging chairs, the moody basalt rock found scattered across the Golan has been reused for flooring, walling and other detailed decoration. Also used to decorate the hotel’s walls inside and out are local and international artwork, many incorporating organic materials and themes.
Rooms at the hotel start at $650 per night for two persons, bed and breakfast; and from $890 on weekends and holidays.
In a low, stand-alone building that was once a horse stable sits the cozy reception area, which also features a well-stocked bar and, below, a wine cellar offering expertly presented tastings of boutique wines from Israeli vineyards.
Another of the newer buildings houses the spa, which offers an array of treatments by healers from the surrounding Druze villages, and the Rouge restaurant, which takes advantage of the local farms and their produce to provide a classy and delicious array of meals, including a modest but mouthwatering breakfast.
While it is the attention to such detail that has made Pereh now one of Israel’s most sought-after resorts – it was recently featured in the premier travel magazine Conde Nast, which touted the Galilee as one of the best destinations for 2023 – for many the resort’s intrigue is its wildly beautiful and remote location.
“In a country so condensed like Israel, there is a sense of space here,” said Eldar. “This is a place where you can really breathe.”
The writer was a guest of the Pereh Mountain Resort.
