Ennismore begins converting Dubai Media City building into 230-room Hoxton flagship

Ennismore and Select Group have formalized plans to deliver The Hoxton, Dubai Media City, marking the brand’s first operational entry into the United Arab Emirates and the broader Middle East. The project is a multi-million-Dirham conversion of an existing building into a 230-room hotel, designed by Ennismore’s interior design studio AIME Studios, and is positioned as a regional flagship for the operator.

The property will run across multiple service lines from day one. Food and beverage, curated by Paris Society, will span four distinct concepts: Onaka, a Japanese handroll bar developed with award-winning French restaurateur Moïse Sfez; Bleachers, a social sports bar; Il Bambini Club, a trattoria with an open kitchen; and Tope, a rooftop venue serving Mexican-inspired cuisine and cocktails. A lobby space designed for both guests and locals will anchor cultural programming and community activations. A spa, treatment rooms and contrast therapy facilities round out the core offering.

The most operationally distinctive element is The Hoxton’s first wellness club anywhere in its global portfolio. Rather than a conventional gym, the facility is conceived as a social and community destination, housing a large gym floor, movement studios, spa treatment rooms, contrast therapy facilities and a members’ lounge, all finished in the brand’s residential aesthetic. Beaum, a healthy café concept, will operate within the wellness space as an extension of the health and recovery offering. The club is intended to serve both hotel guests and the wider Dubai Media City community.

Location is central to the delivery logic. Dubai Media City sits adjacent to Dubai Marina, Palm Jumeirah and Jumeirah Lake Towers, placing the hotel inside an established corridor of media companies, production studios and digital businesses. Ennismore and Select Group have framed the site as naturally aligned with The Hoxton’s community-driven model.

Louis Abboud, Group Chief Growth Officer and COO of IMEAT and APAC at Ennismore, described Dubai as a long-standing target market and confirmed the wellness club is a first of its kind within the Hoxton portfolio globally. Israr Liaqat, Group CEO of Select Group, said wellness and wellbeing form the foundation of the company’s development approach across residences and hospitality, calling the partnership a natural extension of Select Group’s operational philosophy.

Meanwhile, the signing follows recent openings elsewhere in the brand’s expansion pipeline. The Hoxton, Bengaluru City opened in India in October, and The Hoxton, Melbourne launched the year before. The Dubai project extends a global footprint that now spans 19 properties across the UK, Europe and the United States, with additional properties under development in Oslo, Nashville and Mexico City.

Ennismore’s regional infrastructure is already substantial. The operator runs more than 70 hotels and resorts across the Middle East, Turkey and North Africa, representing over 23,000 rooms. Existing flagships include Delano Dubai, Mondrian Doha, Rixos Tersane Istanbul, 25hours One Central Dubai, SLS The Red Sea and SO/ Ras Al Khaimah. Properties in the pipeline include Mondrian Abu Dhabi, Rixos Dubai Islands, SLS Jeddah and Mama Shelter Cape Town.

The Hoxton brand traces its origins to London’s Shoreditch neighbourhood, where founder Sharan Pasricha established the open-house hotel concept that has since expanded internationally. Whether the wellness club model, a genuine operational first for the brand, proves replicable across other Hoxton properties will be one of the more consequential questions to emerge from the Dubai build-out.