Hospitality
SWISSÔTEL AL GHURAIR PRESENTS ‘A CHRISTMAS TO REMEMBER’ WITH FESTIVE DINING, CREATIVE WORKSHOPS AND SPA INDULGENCES
Dubai, November 2025 – This December, Swissôtel Al Ghurair invites guests to create cherished holiday memories with a thoughtfully curated line-up of festive experiences, bringing families and friends together for ‘A Christmas to Remember’. From immersive dining to interactive workshops and indulgent spa treatments, the hotel promises a season filled with joy, warmth and celebration.

Sunday Festive Brunch
Indulge in a gourmet brunch at Swissôtel Al Ghurair and savour seasonal delights such as sage-roasted butternut squash soup, shrimp & fennel salad, smoked duck breast, poached salmon salad, grilled peach with aged balsamic, classic meatloaf, Massaman duck curry, honey-roasted turkey with lemon thyme, and baked Quattro Formaggi pasta. Live stations will feature grilled chicken, beef and fish steaks, adding to the festive feast. To complete the experience, guests can enjoy an irresistible selection of decadent desserts including Chocolate & Marshmallow Crunch Log, Festive Pudding, the traditional Yule Log and rich fruit cake.
Children can also enjoy activities including face painting, Christmas arts & crafts, a kids’ cooking class and a bouncy castle.
Venue: Liwan Restaurant
Dates: Sunday’s 7th, 14th and 21st December
Timings: 1 PM – 4 PM

Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony
Be a part of the festive magic with the grand lighting of a 20-foot Christmas tree, sparkling with seasonal decorations. Guests can enjoy a Christmas choir performance, pass-around canapés, festive drinks, access to the ‘Little Explorers’ Play Area and a gingerbread house-making workshop.
Dates: Thursday, 11th December
Timings: 5 PM to 7 PM

Festive Swiss Chocolate Masterclass
For chocolate lovers seeking a hands-on festive experience, Swissôtel Al Ghurair invites you to join an exclusive Festive Swiss Chocolate Masterclass, where the talented pastry team will guide guests step-by-step in crafting their very own decadent Yule Log. This immersive session blends creativity, flavour and festive fun, offering dessert enthusiasts the chance to learn professional techniques while creating a delicious masterpiece to take home.
Dates: Thursday, 11th December
Timings: 3 PM to 4 PM
RSVPs are required by Wednesday, 9th December 2025

Lindt Festive Afternoon Tea
Afternoon Tea with decadent festive notes. Guests can enjoy festive treats such as maple-smoked turkey ham with brie & cranberry sauce on mini brioche, dill & lemon herb cream cheese on cucumber boats, sourdough chicken empanadas, cheddar cheese & caramelised onion tartlets, Christmas macarons, red velvet cake, berry tarts, and homemade chocolate & orange scones with whipped cream and blueberry jam, along with a selection of hot chocolates, luxury teas and coffees.
A specially curated kids’ menu includes macarons, chocolate-dipped marshmallows, baked mac & cheese, and peanut butter & strawberry sandwiches. Also, as an added treat, Swissôtel has thoughtfully organised a selection of family board games to cherish quality time with loved ones.
Venue: Yasmine Lounge
Dates: Daily from Friday, 5th December to Sunday, 4th January 2026
Timings: Between 12 PM and 6 PM

Gingerbread House Workshop
Families can join a delightful Gingerbread House Workshop, where creativity meets holiday cheer. The pastry chefs at Swissôtel Al Ghurair will teach the “Little Explorers” how to build their very own gingerbread creations with icing and sweet decorations while the parents can enjoy the indulgent Festive Lindt Afternoon Tea.
Venue: Yasmine Lounge
Dates: Saturdays 13th, 20th and 27th December
Timings: 2 PM to 4 PM

Christmas Eve Dinner
Celebrating the festive spirit, Swissôtel Al Ghurair presents a lavish dining experience, as the magical Christmas Eve sets in. Enjoy a sumptuous buffet featuring prawn & pomelo salad, poached seafood bar, roasted chestnut soup, chicken terrine with pistachio, beef consommé, whole roasted turkey, roasted Brussels sprouts, seafood paella, and grilled lamb chops. Sweet treats include Yule Log, panettone, Stollen, Christmas pudding and mocha cake.
Adding to the magic of the evening is groovy live music that will fill the venue with beloved Christmas melodies, creating a warm and joyful ambience. Little ones can enjoy an array of engaging kids’ activities, from Christmas arts and crafts to face painting and even a bouncy castle. The highlight of the night is a special visit from Santa, making it a truly unforgettable Christmas Eve for the whole family.
Venue: Liwan Restaurant
Dates: Wednesday, 24th December
Timings: 7 PM to 11 PM

Christmas Day Brunch
Families are invited for cherishing a traditional Christmas Brunch complemented by live entertainment and children’s activities. On Christmas Day, enjoy a festive brunch with a trio melon salad, pulled chicken with artichoke salad, chestnut soup, pulled turkey salad with cranberry dressing, whole roasted turkey, slow-cooked beef ribs, seared Atlantic salmon and a poached seafood bar. Festive desserts include Yule Log, panettone, Stollen Christmas pudding, toffee pudding, eggnog mousse and passionfruit pavlova.
Children can enjoy face painting, Christmas carols, arts & crafts, ornament hunts and a cooking class for Snowman marshmallow pops alongside a special visit from Santa.
Venue: Liwan Restaurant
Dates: Thursday, 25th December
Timings: 1 PM to 4 PM

Festive Spa Offers
This holiday season, Swissôtel Al Ghurair invites guests to unwind, refresh and immerse themselves in luxurious festive spa experiences. Perfectly timed for the season of celebration, these treatments provide a blissful escape, leaving guests rejuvenated, radiant and fully immersed in the festive spirit. Each experience is complemented with a comforting cup of signature hot chocolate to complete the indulgence.
The Festive Glow Revival facial envelops the skin in warmth and radiance, blending aromatic cinnamon and frankincense to restore a luminous, holiday-ready glow, completed with a revitalising arm and hand scrub for an added touch of luxury.
The Peppermint Luxe Serenity massage offers a soothing journey for body and mind, combining calming lavender, invigorating petitgrain and refreshing peppermint notes to melt away stress and balance the senses.
Dates: Wednesday, 3rd December to Monday, 12th January 2026
Timings: Between 10 AM and 10 PM
Swissôtel Al Ghurair’s festive offerings are designed to create unforgettable experiences that celebrate togetherness, gratitude and the spirit of the season, truly making it a Christmas to remember.
Hospitality
Endless Creators Launches in the UAE to Streamline Talent and Production Workflows
A new platform is entering the UAE’s growing creator economy with a clear focus on structure, reliability, and end-to-end execution. Founded by Rosie Gunn and Chris Primett, Endless Creators positions itself as a full-service talent, creator, and production platform designed to simplify how brands and creative professionals collaborate.
Bridging Gaps in a Fragmented Industry
The platform is built on firsthand industry experience. Having worked across campaigns as on-set talent, the founders identified persistent challenges within the region’s creative ecosystem, including inconsistent standards, fragmented workflows, and delays in payment and coordination.
Endless Creators is designed to address these inefficiencies by creating a more structured and transparent environment for both brands and talent. The focus is on bringing consistency to an industry that often operates across multiple disconnected layers.
A Curated Talent Ecosystem
Unlike open marketplaces, Endless Creators operates as a curated network. Talent is vetted and selected to ensure reliability and quality across projects. The platform brings together a wide range of creative professionals, including content creators, models, actors, videographers, stylists, and production specialists.
This approach enables brands to access a more controlled and dependable talent pool, while also offering creators a more organised and supportive working environment.
Beyond Talent: Full-Service Production
The platform extends beyond talent sourcing into full-scale production support. Services include creative direction, concept development, location management, and production execution. By integrating these functions, Endless Creators aims to reduce the complexity typically associated with managing creative projects across multiple vendors.
Operational tools are also built into the platform to improve efficiency, including structured call sheets, influencer licensing support, and systems designed to streamline communication between stakeholders.
Raising Standards Across the Ecosystem
A key focus for the platform is improving the overall experience for talent. This includes more transparent processes, reliable payment structures, and better on-set organisation. By addressing these foundational issues, Endless Creators is positioning itself as part of a broader shift towards professionalising the region’s creator economy.
Positioning the UAE as a Creative Hub
With roots in both the UAE and the UK, the founders are bringing a global perspective to a rapidly evolving local market. The platform is not only aimed at improving collaboration within the region but also at supporting the UAE’s positioning as a hub for high-quality production and creative output.
Editorial Perspective
The launch of Endless Creators reflects a wider transition in the creator economy, where scale alone is no longer enough. As brands demand higher quality, faster execution, and more accountability, platforms that combine talent access with operational structure are becoming increasingly relevant.
In this context, Endless Creators is not just another talent marketplace. It represents a move towards integrated, production-led ecosystems that align creative output with business outcomes—an approach that is likely to shape the next phase of growth in the region’s content and media landscape.
Hospitality
WHY CREDIBLE SUSTAINABILITY STILL WINS IN AN INFLATIONARY MARKET



Ryan Black, Co-founder & CEO of SAMBAZON – the organic, fair trade and sustainable açaí brand – shares that the future of sustainability belongs to brands that can show measurable metrics, independent audits and full supply chain transparency.
Consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products, even when inflation continues to shape purchasing decisions. For hospitality businesses, this is an important signal. It underlines that sustainability still carries commercial value, particularly in premium cafés, hotels, restaurants and foodservice settings where quality, provenance and brand trust all influence buying behaviour.
At the same time, consumers are becoming quicker to question the claims behind the products they buy. They may still value sustainability, but they are far less willing to accept broad environmental language without evidence. For hospitality operators, that creates a clear challenge. Sustainability can still support premium pricing, but only when it is credible, specific and properly substantiated.
At SAMBAZON, we continue to see strong demand for certified organic and ethically sourced products, despite inflationary pressure. That is especially true across natural retail, specialty grocery, foodservice and premium café channels.
Middle East consumers now actively seek transparency, clean labels and brands with verified impact. Our retail partners report that shoppers are willing to pay more for products that deliver on both quality and purpose, especially when certifications are clearly displayed and backed by third-party verification.


Sustainability = Quality
In hospitality, this premium positioning is often even more visible. Consumers increasingly associate certified organic and fair trade ingredients with superior quality, and that can strengthen menu pricing power. In other words, sustainability does not sit outside the guest experience. It’s part of how quality is perceived.
But hospitality businesses cannot rely on good intentions or attractive messaging.
Today’s consumer expects evidence, not claims.
The proof points that matter most are those that can be verified and explained clearly. That includes recognized certification standards such as Fair for Life and USDA Certified Organic, as well as traceability from harvest to finished product, third-party audits, transparent impact reporting and measurable environmental protection. Consumers also want to understand the wider effect of their purchase; they want to know how their buying decision supports farmers, protects ecosystems and reinvests in communities.
That shift matters, because many of the old shortcuts in sustainability communication no longer work. Terms such as sustainable, ethical, green and eco-friendly can quickly become meaningless if they are too broad or impossible to prove. In our view, those words should only be used when they can be defined clearly and supported by evidence. Internally, every sustainability claim we make has to meet three tests: it must be backed by third-party verification, terms used must be clearly defined, and we must be able to provide supporting data if asked. Whenever possible, we replace adjectives with numbers.
That discipline is important because misconceptions still persist. Some consumers assume that sustainability simply means a higher price without added value. Others confuse natural with certified ethical sourcing. Many still believe sustainability claims are mostly marketing.
In reality, verified sustainability requires audited standards, compliance costs and structural investment across the supply chain. The price reflects those commitments, but it also reflects quality, transparency and long-term environmental stewardship.
For SAMBAZON, ethical sourcing is not a campaign line. It is built into the structure of the business. One hundred per cent of our açaí is certified organic, and our entire supply chain is Fair for Life certified. We work directly with 827 individual açaí harvesters across 256 communities in the Amazon region.
Since our founding, we have invested more than $1 million in harvester communities through verified fair trade premiums, helping to fund schools, health centers and community improvements. In 2024 alone, our Fair Trade-certified harvest area encompassed 100,204 acres of Amazon rainforest, an area more than four times the size of Paris. According to an independent 60 Decibels survey, 100 per cent of harvesters believe SAMBAZON contributes to the development of their community.


Those figures matter in hospitality because they move the conversation away from abstract values and into operational fact. They also help buyers explain why a product costs what it does.
Inflation has increased costs across logistics, packaging and global freight, but we have not reduced our certification standards or sourcing commitments to offset those pressures. We justify price through certified organic quality, verified fair trade sourcing, functional benefits and transparent, documented impact. Retailers and hospitality buyers understand that cutting corners on sourcing may reduce short-term cost, but it can also compromise brand equity and long-term consumer trust.
This is where the industry still gets it wrong. Too many sustainability claims rely on broad, unverified language with little measurable backing. Greenwashing often happens when brands use undefined terms without certification, highlight one positive initiative while ignoring wider supply chain impacts, or avoid third-party verification altogether. That may once have been enough to support a story, but it’s no longer enough to sustain trust.
For hospitality businesses, the lesson is straightforward. Consumers value sustainable products and will often pay more for them, even in a pressured economy. But the premium depends less on promise than on proof.
The future of sustainability communication will belong to brands that can show measurable metrics, independent audits and full supply chain transparency. In hospitality, where trust and perceived quality matter so much, documented proof is no longer a nice addition. It is the standard consumers increasingly expect.
Hospitality
HYDRATION WITH PURPOSE: OURWATR AND KEETA UAE COLLABORATE TO TURN EVERYDAY WATER INTO COMMUNITY IMPACT


Ourwatr is set to revolutionize community hydration with its free mineral water programme. Today, Ourwatr proudly announces a purpose-led collaboration with Keeta, the international on-demand food delivery platform. This strategic partnership is designed to expand community access to locally produced premium mineral water while simultaneously reinforcing a shared, profound commitment to social impact across the UAE.
Designed to serve the communities it reaches, Ourwatr is a homegrown UAE startup built on the belief that every bottle of water should deliver value beyond refreshment. Through its purpose-led model, a portion of each bottle distributed is channelled toward community programmes in partnership with Beit Al Khair Society. Sourced from the natural underground springs of Dibba and bottled locally under the Emirates Quality Mark (EQM), Ourwatr reflects the strength and credibility of the UAE’s SME ecosystem, transforming everyday hydration into sustained community support.

Through this collaboration, Keeta reinforces its commitment to supporting UAE-based SMEs initiatives that advance sustainability and community development. Keeta’s involvement provides crucial resources that enable Ourwatr to significantly expand its reach and accessibility. By aligning with a locally rooted platform like Ourwatr, Keeta contributes to scaling this impactful initiative responsibly, ensuring it maintains its community-first focus while reaching a broader audience. This collaboration reflects how platforms operating in the UAE can align their growth with broader social and environmental priorities, while actively supporting local businesses. Keeta’s support is instrumental in allowing Ourwatr to distribute its free mineral water more widely and enhance its community programs.
Commenting on the initiative, Lucas Xie, General Manager, Keeta UAE, said: “At Keeta, we see our mission as more than a platform; we are part of the communities we operate in. Partnering with Ourwatr allows us to support a homegrown initiative that embeds contribution into its everyday operations. By providing essential support, we are helping to expand Ourwatr’s access and reach, thereby playing a responsible role in strengthening the UAE’s SME ecosystem and fostering community-focused initiatives practically and sustainably.”
Abhinav Murali, Co-Founder of Ourwatr, said: “Ourwatr was founded on a simple conviction: giving back is not an initiative for us; it is built into every bottle we distribute. Our collaboration with Keeta enables us to scale this impact responsibly, reaching more people while ensuring that community contribution remains at the heart of our model. Growth means very little to us unless it strengthens the communities we operate in and leaves a positive mark beyond the product itself.”
With distribution planned across key neighborhoods in Dubai and the potential for broader expansion, the initiative is designed to scale thoughtfully while remaining firmly anchored in its founding principle: serving the UAE community through hydration with purpose. This initiative has been approved by the Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department (IACAD) under permit number PRHCE- 004959682
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