Rotana, the hotel management company based in Abu Dhabi, has trimmed operational costs and reshaped expansion plans to focus on the GCC and sub-Saharan Africa, as it works to stay afloat in challenging market conditions with ongoing revenue declines, its president and chief executive Omer Kaddouri said. “In spite of cumulative inflationary cost increases in excess of 16% over the past five years, we managed not only to avoid these increases but decease our expenses by 13.5% over the period,” Kaddouri stated. Average revenue per available room (RevPar) in Abu Dhabi declined by 14.7% Y-o-Y in 1Q18, according to an EY hospitality sector report. Rotana, which operates 65 hotels across the GCC, Turkey and Africa through management agreements, recorded an average RevPar drop of 10 percentage points across its portfolio in 2017 and expects the rate of decline to slow to 5 to 7% this year.