Speaker profile

Walid Harouni

Chief Operating Officer
Ròya International

Walid is a multi-lingual, multi-disciplinary international hospitality professional who earned his BA in Hospitality in 1984 from L'Ecole Hoteliere de Strasbourg and later completed a two-year Master’s Degree programme in Hotel & Restaurant Administration from the Institut de Management Hôtelier International (Cornell University/ESSEC Business School Joint Programme, Paris Campus) where he graduated in 1989.

Commencing his career with InterContinental Hotel in Riyadh, Walid went on to work for Le Meridien Hotel properties in Paris and Cairo as F&B Manager before joining the InterContinental Hotel group steadily rising to become a General Manager in 2000. After a 14 year career in operations, including 8 years as General Manager for various InterContinental Hotel properties, Walid took on a different challenge joining the Abu Dhabi based National Corporation for Tourism and Hotels as Hotels Division Director in 2007. In his new role, Walid oversaw all aspects of the group's hotel division and managed the rapid growth and evolution of the Danat Hotels and Resorts chain while asset managing various signature properties in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Throughout the course of his career Walid has gained extensive knowledge of the MEA markets, namely Oman, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, France, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. Accepting every challenge as an opportunity, Walid strategically manages change and uses impact and influence to develop talent in each of the more than 30 hotels in the Ròya asset management portfolio.