Hospitality

CREATING DESTINATIONS WITH A SENSE OF PLACE

Published

2 months ago

July 21, 2026

Exclusive interview with Holly Hallam, Holly Hallam is Co-Owner of DLSM Studio

DLSM Studio recently completed NAC Kuwait, the sixth NAC venue you’ve delivered across the Middle East. As a brand expands across multiple markets, how do you maintain consistency while ensuring each location feels authentic to its destination?

Design is an opportunity to be curious and creative, to tell a unique story by creating an emotional and physical environment whether you are working on a standalone concept or a brand expansion.

Defining the design DNA is a vital component of designing for multi-site brands, curating a connective thread that unites each site without becoming repetitive, supporting long-term growth whilst still retaining a core identity.

As design guardians for NAC, we’ve developed a deep understanding of the brand’s defining character: its relaxed European elegance, social energy and sense of familiarity. This foundation informs every project whilst each new location interprets the brand through the lens of its surroundings.

For NAC Kuwait, our design draws inspiration from the energy of the Hessah District and its waterfront setting. Through expansive glazing, open terraces, natural materials and a muted palette, we created a seamless connection between the interior and the coastal landscape, delivering an experience that feels both locally relevant and unmistakably NAC.

Before entering design, you spent years understanding audiences and consumer behaviour. Do you think that perspective gives you an advantage when creating spaces that need to emotionally connect with guests?

Absolutely. Design has always been about people first.

Understanding consumer behaviour taught me to look beyond the aesthetics and ask why people make decisions, what influences them emotionally and what creates lasting memories. That strategic thinking still underpins every project we undertake. Before we even start our design process we’re asking questions about the guests, their journey, the brand values and the emotional response we want people to leave with.

Beautiful spaces are important, but beautiful spaces with purpose are what create commercial success. When you truly understand your audience, you’re able to design experiences that feel intuitive, meaningful and memorable.

Your recent work on The Trafalgar St. James and Radisson RED Twickenham demonstrates two very different approaches to hospitality design. How do you decide which stories are worth telling within a space?

Every project begins with curiosity.

We spend time understanding what’s behind our clients’ ambitions and brands, their commercial objectives, KPI’s, the people, personality, and intended audience, before we begin designing.

Combining this knowledge with our anthropologic research – studying the historical, architectural and cultural landscape of the site – helps us to build and ultimately reveal the narrative.

As with The Trafalgar St. James, it was rooted in the building’s heritage intertwined with a contemporary sense of luxury to create a stylish destination. Other times, it’s about creating a sense of community by capturing the energetic personality of the Alliance Twickenham Stadium combined with the bold brand of Radisson RED.

The story you choose to tell should always feel authentic to the operator and guest. Once you’ve found that truth, every design decision becomes much clearer because it all supports the same narrative.

DLSM Studio has worked across a diverse portfolio that includes luxury hotels, destination restaurants, branded residences and mixed-use developments. Have you noticed a shift in what clients are asking for compared to five years ago, and what does that tell us about where hospitality is heading?

Without question. Five years ago, conversations often centred around creating visually impressive destinations that felt rooted to the locality of the property. Today, clients are thinking much more holistically.

They’re asking how design can speak on both an emotional and physical level. Considering a more sensory and personalised experience that resonates with guests on a deeper level.

We are designing in stronger brand identifiers and looking at a greater focus on niche pillars – such as health and wellbeing. These elements are truly integrated into the property, not just positioned in the Spa or Gym, but across the food and beverage menus, in room amenities and guest touch points.

Hospitality is becoming increasingly layered. It’s no longer just about what a space looks like, it’s about how it performs and how it connects with people. That’s exactly where we believe the industry is heading, and it’s very much aligned with the way we’ve always approached design.

The brand has built a reputation for creating spaces rooted in narrative. Why do you think storytelling has become such a powerful differentiator in a competitive evolving market?

Sharing stories builds deeper connections.

Storytelling is the ancient method of unifying people. It helps to create personality and purpose and intrigue. When guests become curious to explore and discover the story of a property it builds a deeper, positive emotional connection.

For us, storytelling isn’t about adding decorative references or themed moments. It’s about creating a coherent experience where every detail, from branding, interiors, operational delivery and guest journey, enhances and speaks to the same idea. When every touchpoint works together, the experience feels effortless, authentic and ultimately much more memorable.

Many designers focus on what a space looks like. You often speak about how a space feels. Why do you think emotion has become such an important design metric?

Because people don’t remember every material specification, they remember how a place made them feel.

Hospitality is an emotional industry. Whether someone is celebrating, travelling, relaxing or connecting with others, the environment plays an enormous role in shaping that experience. As designers, we’re creating spaces that appeal to the senses, support wellbeing and encourage genuine human connection.

When emotion becomes part of the design process, the outcome is far richer than aesthetics alone. Studies show that positive emotions toward a brand have a greater influence on loyalty than trust and other judgments, with emotionally connected guests having a 306% higher lifetime value towards the brand.

It’s those emotional moments that create loyalty, advocacy and lasting memories, which are ultimately the true measure of successful hospitality design.

What lessons from working with global luxury hospitality brands do you believe can be applied to residential living today?

The boundaries between hospitality and residential design are becoming increasingly blurred.

People want their homes to offer the same sense of luxury, comfort and considered experience they enjoy when staying in a great hotel. It is the considered nature of a hospitality experience that people are bringing into their houses that enhance the way they move and live at home.

Thoughtful planning, intuitive functionality, wellbeing, craftsmanship and a strong sense of place all contribute to a richer everyday experience. Great design should improve people’s lives, support their routines and create moments of joy.

As we say in our studio, it’s about designing beyond the aesthetic and creating environments that people genuinely love spending time in.

Hospitality

Moonrise Takes Dubai Cuisine to Almaty with AUYL Collaboration

Published

2 days ago

September 18, 2026

Integrator Web-Editor

Visit Dubai and ByChefs, the UAE-founded international restaurant ranking, are bringing one of Dubai’s leading homegrown restaurants, Moonrise, to Almaty this September. On 21 September, Chef Solemann Haddad will join Kazakhstan’s AUYL for a one-night-only dinner, showcasing his distinctive interpretation of “Dubai Cuisine” through a collaborative menu created with the AUYL team.

The dinner forms part of a wider effort by Visit Dubai and ByChefs to showcase Dubai’s evolving culinary identity internationally, bringing together one of the city’s most distinctive homegrown chefs with a restaurant equally rooted in its own culture and sense of place.

Born and raised in Dubai, Solemann grew up surrounded by the cultural intersections that define the city. That experience became the foundation of Moonrise: a cuisine that moves between Middle Eastern, French and Japanese influences, but which Solemann describes more simply as “Dubai Cuisine.”

For Visit Dubai and ByChefs, the collaboration is an opportunity to introduce Almaty diners to the creativity and diversity of Dubai’s homegrown restaurant scene and inspire them to experience it firsthand. Through Moonrise, guests will encounter a culinary perspective that could only have emerged from Dubai — shaped by its people, cultures and position as a global meeting point.

Chef Solemann Haddad, Founder and Chef of Moonrise, says: “Moonrise has always been my way of telling the story of Dubai and the food I grew up around, so taking it outside the UAE for the first time feels like a really important moment for us. This isn’t about simply bringing a Moonrise menu somewhere else. It’s about showing what Dubai Cuisine means to us, while having a genuine exchange with another restaurant that has an equally strong sense of place and identity. AUYL has that, and I think there are some really interesting parallels between the way we both look at culture, memory and food.”

At the heart of AUYL’s kitchen are three ingredients fundamental to nomadic food culture — water, flour and meat — with dishes prepared over open fire and through techniques involving the kazan, mangal and tandoor. Some herbs and vegetables are also grown on a small farm on the restaurant’s grounds.

It is this strong sense of place that provides the foundation for the collaboration: Moonrise bringing its interpretation of contemporary Dubai to Almaty, and AUYL bringing contemporary Central Asia to the same table.

For the one-night-only menu, the two culinary perspectives move back and forth across a series of dishes rather than attempting to merge into a single cuisine.

The evening begins with Foie Gras Puri, featuring foie gras ganache, pineapple chutney, chilli oil and date syrup, alongside Baursaks stuffed with braised horse meat and porcini mushrooms, served with Moonrise Dynamite Sauce.

Seafood follows with Market Prawns, accompanied by asparagus, toum ranch, dill oil, ponzu and potato tartlet, before Scallop with tare, apple, green tomato and jusai salsa oil, paired with Moonrise Orange Sarookh.

One of Solemann’s signatures also makes the journey from Dubai: Shawarma, prepared with Wagyu striploin MB11–12, loomi seasoning, shawarma marinade, Mexici sauce and pickled turnip.

The dinner closes with Banoffee, bringing together banana crémeux, banana compote, croustillant, ganache, chocolate tuile and gahwa caramel, followed by a selection of local sweet petit fours.

(Auyl Spokes person) says: ““AUYL has always been about exploring Central Asian culture through a contemporary lens, so welcoming Moonrise to Almaty feels like a natural exchange between two restaurants shaped by the places they call home. Dubai and Kazakhstan have very different culinary histories, but there is a shared curiosity in how we approach ingredients, memory and tradition. We’re excited to bring those perspectives together for one evening and to introduce our guests to Solemann’s interpretation of Dubai Cuisine.””

More than a one-night dinner, the collaboration provides an opportunity to showcase the evolution of Dubai’s homegrown dining scene on an international stage. Through Moonrise and Solemann’s deeply personal interpretation of Dubai Cuisine, guests in Almaty will experience a restaurant and chef shaped by a city where cultures, ingredients and culinary traditions continuously intersect.

Selected to represent Dubai’s homegrown dining scene in Almaty, Moonrise brings a culinary perspective shaped entirely by the city, creating an exchange with AUYL that places contemporary Dubai and Central Asia at the same table.

Hospitality

TWG Tea Unveils Oud Night Tea, a Country-Exclusive Creation for the United Arab Emirates

Published

2 days ago

September 18, 2026

Integrator Web-Editor

Long before it perfumed royal courts and desert majlis, oud carried stories: of caravan routes and coastlines, of embers kept burning through the night. Tea travelled those same routes, and now, TWG Tea, the world’s finest luxury tea brand, unites them in Oud Night Tea, a distinguished addition to the Grand Mode Tea Collection created exclusively for the United Arab Emirates. The evocative black tea unfolds in richly layered notes of molten resin, vanilla, smouldering rose flowers, rare calambac, incense and delicate smokiness.

Drawing upon the brand’s unrivalled expertise in sourcing the finest harvests from renowned tea-producing regions around the world, this debut marks the international launch of a new collection of country-exclusive teas. Guided by its intimate knowledge of the history, tea traditions and culture in each of its locations, as well as the tastes and preferences of tea lovers around the world, TWG Tea’s master blenders compose every tea as a perfumer creates a fragrance — layering exceptional tea leaves, rare ingredients and evocative aromas to reveal an entirely new experience in the teacup. Capturing the flavours, heritage and spirit of place, each exclusive blend will celebrate both the finest teas that define the country and TWG Tea’s singular artistry in transforming them into an unforgettable sensory journey.

Crafted from exceptional whole leaf black tea sourced directly from the world’s finest tea gardens, Oud Night Teareflects TWG Tea’s unwavering pursuit of excellence in sourcing, blending and crafting the world’s most extraordinary teas. Expertly blended to reveal remarkable depth and complexity, it is an homage to the ancient trade routes that carried tea and oud across India, the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. A tribute to the region’s enduring cultural legacy, this exclusive creation is available at TWG Tea Boutiques in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Steeped in Legacy
For centuries, Oud has been revered as one of the world’s most precious aromatic woods, treasured by royalty and noble families across the Middle East for its immense rarity, craftsmanship and cultural significance. Traditionally burnt in homes and mosques as a gesture of hospitality and reverence, its rich and captivating fragrance has become an enduring symbol of the region’s cultural heritage.

With Oud Night Tea, TWG Tea transforms this ancient treasure into an infusion: rare oud reveals a dark, earthy sensuality within the cup, while smouldering rose, molten resin, rare calambac, incense and lingering vanilla unfold in harmonious layers. Housed in a collectible tin in the colour of aged oud, lacquered in deep brown and traced with gold, Oud Night Tea offers tea lovers a new way to experience a fragrance it has cherished for centuries.

The Ritual of Oud
The ritual extends beyond the teacup with the Oud Night Tea Scented Candle, part of the Perfume of Tea Collection, crafted by TWG Tea’s master blenders in collaboration with a secret French parfumeur and cirier renowned for creations for the most luxurious fashion houses. Filling the air with warm notes of calambac, incense and smoky black tea, the candle is meticulously made through an artisanal process — beginning with the distillation of six kilograms of Oud Night Tea leaves to capture the essence of the blend, hand-poured into heat-resistant brushed glass, and finished with a 100% cotton wick, individually primed and hand-straightened for a clean, even burn.

Among these creations, the Oud Night Tea Scented Candle stands as the collection’s most evocative ode yet: a fragrance and an infusion, born of the same enduring legend.

Oud Night Tea from the Global Country-Exclusive Tea Collection, AED108 (100g). Oud Night Tea Scented Candle, AED339. Available from September 2026 exclusively at all TWG Tea Boutiques across the United Arab Emirates: Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, and The Galleria Al Maryah Island in Abu Dhabi.

Hospitality

ATM 2026 unveils new VIDEC research highlighting the growing influence of OTAs across Middle East travel

Published

2 days ago

September 18, 2026

Integrator Web-Editor

Online travel channels are set to play an increasingly important role in the UAE travel market’s recovery, with online air penetration forecast to rise to 52% by 2030, according to new research from VIDEC presented at Arabian Travel Market (ATM) 2026.

VIDEC’s GCC & Egypt Travel Market Sizing & OTA Benchmarking Study, 2019–2030 examines the fastest-growing travel segments, market projections and distribution trends shaping the UAE and wider region, including the growing influence of online travel agencies (OTAs).

The research forecasts that the UAE air market, measured using a demand-side methodology based on bookings made at the local point of sale (POS), will reach US$6.5 billion by 2030, driven primarily by online channels and the recovery of corporate travel demand. Online penetration is forecast to increase from 42% in 2025 to 46% in 2026 and 52% by the end of the decade.

The findings also highlight the scale of the wider UAE aviation market. UAE airports handled approximately 160 million passengers in 2025, with low-cost carriers accounting for 35% of traffic. Passenger volumes among low-cost carriers increased by 81%, from 31 million in 2019 to 56 million in 2025, while network carriers carried 103 million passengers in 2025, compared with 97 million in 2019.

VIDEC also estimates the UAE to be the region’s largest air market in gross booking value (GBV) terms, valued at US$55 billion in 2025 across local and global points of sale.

Virendra Jain, CEO and Co-Founder of VIDEC, said: “The UAE’s travel market opened strong in 2026. Between 2023 and 2025, Emirati carriers recorded robust growth, particularly the low-cost carriers. That momentum carried into the first two months of 2026, after which the market saw significant setbacks.

“Capacity for full-service carriers remains 15–25% below pre-war levels, while low-cost carriers (LCCs) – local as well as the likes of Air India Express, flynas and IndiGo – are recovering faster and are expected to end 2026 closer to their 2025 capacity. Flying point-to-point and catering primarily to short-haul regional demand, LCCs are leading the rebound as this segment is the first to return.”

Competition within the OTA market is also intensifying. According to VIDEC, MakeMyTrip maintained its leadership of the UAE air OTA market in 2026, supported by the South Asian diaspora and higher fares, while Trip.com has grown rapidly to become the second-largest air OTA after entering the UAE market more recently. In the hotel OTA category, Booking.com and Agoda together account for approximately 70% of the market.

Danielle Curtis, Regional Portfolio Director – UAE, RX Global, said: “VIDEC’s findings demonstrate how technology and changing booking behaviour are reshaping the UAE travel market. As online penetration continues to increase, the relationship between travellers, OTAs and travel suppliers is evolving rapidly, creating opportunities for both established platforms and newer market entrants.

“Providing access to research of this depth, and bringing the findings together with perspectives from some of the world’s leading online travel businesses, is an important part of ATM’s role in helping the industry understand where the market is heading and identify the opportunities that will shape its next phase.”

Following the VIDEC research presentation, the changing competitive landscape was explored during The Future of OTAs in 30 Minutes, which brought together Ross Veitch, CEO, Wego; Raj Rishi Singh, Chief Business Officer – Corporate, Flights and GCC, MakeMyTrip; and Schubert Lou, CEO, Trip.com.

The panel examined the future role of OTAs as regional and global platforms compete for a greater share of the increasingly digital traveller journey. The discussion explored how evolving consumer expectations and new technologies are changing online travel, as well as the importance of localisation, customer experience and payments in building loyalty and capturing growth.

Taking place from 14–17 September 2026 at Dubai World Trade Centre, the 33rd edition of Arabian Travel Market is being held under the theme ‘Travel 2040: Driving New Frontiers Through Innovation and Technology’, bringing the global travel community together to strengthen partnerships, exchange knowledge and explore the trends shaping the next era of tourism.

Concluding today, ATM is now in its 33rd edition and remains the leading international travel and tourism event in the Middle East, bringing together the global travel community to develop partnerships, share knowledge and explore new business opportunities across the sector.