“The intent is to have a music component to the location, so that will also attract a celebrity angle. The bar component, with high-end food and beverages, will also attract celebrities.” Hard Rock Hotels has previously brought in celebrity designers - anyone want to stay in a room designed by the Black Eyed Peas? - with great success, but it is unclear yet whether this strategy will be employed in Dubai.

But behind the big names there is a solid business model, as Horwell lists the achievements of the company’s USA-based properties. “We are sitting at 150% of RevPAR [revenue per available room] market share against the likes of Hyatt, Marriott, all of the chains,” he said. “We are outperforming our peers in a big way.

What happened was Las Vegas was very successful, Orlando is number one in the market, so we started looking at gateway cities [in the USA].” And now the push is on to take the brand international. “We are looking internationally - 75% of our total development is going to be international,” he said. “We are looking to do five hotels as a minimum for the next ten years, so that will take us to 50. We don’t want to be a hotel company with 300 hotels - that’s not our system.