In the Middle East, hygiene has become a defining marker of operational excellence, public trust and national ambition. As the region accelerates its investments in healthcare infrastructure, world-class hospitality, mega developments and integrated facilities management, the expectations placed on commercial cleaning and hygiene standards have never been higher.

From smart cities and giga-projects to luxury hotels, healthcare clusters and high-volume food service operations, hygiene in the Middle East operates at scale—and under constant scrutiny. Regulatory frameworks are becoming more robust, client awareness is rising, and international benchmarking has become the norm. In this environment, hygiene is no longer a support function; it is a frontline contributor to safety, reputation and business continuity.

This feature brings together perspectives from hygiene leaders across facilities management, food hygiene, hotel housekeeping and healthcare environments operating in the Middle East. Through conversations with regional experts, we explore how global best practices are being localised to meet climatic conditions, workforce diversity, regulatory requirements and cultural expectations unique to the region.

As the Middle East continues to position itself as a global destination for tourism, healthcare excellence and large-scale infrastructure, hygiene will remain a critical enabler of that vision. The insights captured in this feature reflect not only where the industry stands today, but how cross-sector collaboration and shared learning can help elevate commercial hygiene standards across the region—now and in the years ahead.

Varun Kalra, Cluster Executive Housekeeper, The First Group Hospitality

The year 2025 has been a defining chapter in my career, filled with extensive learning, leadership development, and major operational achievements. Leading two properties under The First Collection strengthened my ability to manage large, diverse teams while maintaining consistent service quality across both hotels. This experience taught me the importance of smart delegation, structured communication, and building empowered teams capable of driving excellent guest satisfaction independently.

A significant highlight of the year was successfully supporting the conversion of one of our hotels into the Marriott Tribute Portfolio. This transition offered tremendous learning—from mastering Marriott’s detailed brand standards and cleanliness audits to aligning operational procedures with Tribute’s unique identity. Navigating this change enhanced my capabilities in project coordination, compliance, and team upskilling, ensuring a smooth and high-quality transformation.

Additionally, 2025 provided valuable exposure as I assisted with the opening preparations for The First Group’s third property in Business Bay. Contributing to recruitment, departmental setup, and housekeeping-related order planning sharpened my skills in pre-opening operations and cross-functional collaboration.

Overall, this year strengthened my adaptability, brand knowledge, and strategic leadership—positioning me strongly for greater responsibilities and continued growth within hospitality.

Mohamed Ziada, Executive Housekeeper, ANANTARA MINA RAS AL KHAIMAH RESORT

The year 2025 brought a remarkable evolution in housekeeping standards, with a strong global emphasis on hygiene excellence, environmental responsibility, and elevated guest experiences. At Anantara Mina Ras Al Khaimah Resort, we successfully aligned ourselves with these priorities, strengthening our commitment to both operational excellence and sustainability.

A major highlight this year was our transition towards eco-friendly housekeeping operations. We adopted a full range of environmentally responsible chemicals that deliver strong cleaning performance while minimizing environmental impact. Continuous training was provided to ensure the team fully understood our sustainability goals—ranging from responsible linen-change programs, eliminating single-use plastics, introducing glass refillable bottles, and implementing bulk amenity dispensers. In addition, we promoted the use of high-temperature steam cleaning, significantly reducing chemical dependency and enhancing hygiene.

Another key focus was redefining the luxury guest experience through our “Plus One Service” philosophy. This approach encouraged the team to go beyond the expected—creating small, meaningful moments that surprise and delight guests. From ultra-premium amenities to personalized gifts, handwritten notes, and monogrammed bathrobes or pillowcases, our aim was to make each guest feel valued, recognized, and truly cared for.

One of our proudest achievements in 2025 was the creation of a strong culture of team empowerment. Every housekeeping attendant was encouraged to contribute innovative ideas and take ownership of guest satisfaction. This spirit of responsibility led us to achieve an exceptional 99.5% cleanliness score, a testament to the dedication, passion, and teamwork within the department.

As we move forward, we remain committed to raising standards even higher, ensuring that every guest experience is memorable, sustainable, and reflective of true Anantara luxury.

Dr. Arjun Mohan, CEO, Vanguard Facilities Management

The year 2025 marked a defining inflection point for facility management in the UAE. It became unmistakably clear that FM has evolved from an operational necessity into a strategic discipline—one that safeguards business continuity, preserves asset value, and directly supports the nation’s sustainability ambitions.

Throughout the year, the most resilient organisations were not those reacting fastest to disruptions, but those that had already embedded predictive, data-driven asset strategies into their operations. Energy analytics, condition-based maintenance, and digital monitoring shifted FM from firefighting to foresight. In a region where performance expectations are uncompromising, strategic intelligence has replaced intuition as the currency of excellence.

Yet, 2025 also reinforced a fundamental truth: technology does not lead—people do. Systems may enable efficiency, but it is skilled teams, clear governance, and values-driven leadership that translate strategy into sustained performance. Facility management succeeds when accountability is matched with empowerment, and precision is balanced with empathy.

Finally, the year cemented FM’s role in advancing the UAE’s environmental vision. Sustainability is no longer a parallel objective; it is embedded in how facilities are designed, operated, and maintained—every day, at every level.

The lesson of 2025 is unmistakable: facility management is no longer about maintaining buildings—it is about stewarding environments, futures, and trust.

Ashok Kumar, Associate Director, Emrill

2025 has been an important year for soft FM, driven by greater use of technology, higher client expectations and the continued need to deliver safe, reliable and high-quality services. At Emrill, these developments have shaped how we plan, train and support our teams across our soft services portfolio.

Automation has become a major contributor to operational improvement and has strengthened consistency across daily and periodic cleaning tasks. Our digital FM solution, Techsphere, has recorded more than 2 million tasks, providing clearer visibility of performance and supporting faster, more informed decision-making.

While client expectations around transparency, speed and service quality continue to increase, the soft FM industry is also navigating recruitment and retention challenges in specific geographies. This makes strong training and people development even more critical to maintaining consistent service delivery. Emrill delivered more than 560,000 learning hours in 2025 to ensure our teams have the skills, confidence and support needed to exceed these expectations.

Sustainability continues to influence how soft FM services evolve. We are focused on reducing environmental impact, improving resource use and introducing greener cleaning practices. We are also seeing strong growth in hospitality, hotel and clinical facilities, where specialised soft services directly support guest and patient experience.

Refinements in procurement have also supported more consistent and efficient operations.

These insights will guide how Emrill continues to deliver smart, sustainable and people-focused soft FM solutions in the year ahead.

Sajjad Akram – Expert Consultant Soft FM, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi

The year 2025 represented a pivotal moment in my career. After serving as Associate Director at Osool Integrated Real Estate in Saudi Arabia during 2024, I relocated to Abu Dhabi in January 2025 to become an Expert Consultant for Masdar City, overseeing Soft FM Services. This transition involved not only a change of location but also expanded my mindset, responsibilities, and approach to delivering excellence. Working in two countries over successive years enhanced my adaptability and enriched my understanding of Facilities Management across the region.

At Masdar City, one of the world’s leading sustainable urban developments, I took on the responsibility of serving as an Expert Consultant for Soft Facilities Management. Operating in an environment where every building is sustainability-certified reinforced the critical importance of aligning service providers’ manpower, products, chemicals, equipment, and methodologies with ESG objectives and citywide sustainability frameworks.

Sustainability is the foundation of Soft FM.
At Masdar City, ESG compliance is not optional. Soft FM mobilization must fully integrate sustainable products, green chemicals, trained manpower, waste segregation, and responsible resource utilization.

Cleaning is a compliance-driven function.
Cleaning is no longer a routine activity; it is a compliance requirement that protects asset value, supports occupant wellbeing, and sustains certification standards. CAFM-enabled inspections and data-driven cleaning frequencies are essential.

Contract strategy defines performance.
Well-structured contracts with clearly defined SLAs and KPIs are critical. Cost-driven contracts that compromise technical delivery ultimately weaken service outcomes. A balanced technical and commercial approach is key to long-term success.

Data and digitalization drive efficiency.
Data-driven cleaning models, CAFM platforms, and digital reporting enable informed decision-making, optimized manpower deployment, and transparent performance tracking.

People, training, and technology must work together.
Hybrid service delivery—combining AI, robotics with skilled manpower—proved highly effective. Continuous training ensures teams remain aligned with sustainability goals and service expectations.

Collaboration enables continuous improvement.
Open communication between clients and service providers allows early issue resolution, program refinement, and consistent service excellence.

Caroline Bilen, CEO of The Compass Health Consultancy

Reflecting on 2025, one of the most important lessons has been the power of consistent, proactive infection prevention in safeguarding patient health. This year reinforced that maintaining high hygiene standards is not just a protocol,it is a mindset that every healthcare professional must embrace.

Continuous learning and skill development proved pivotal. CPD-certified courses and workshops allowed healthcare teams to update their knowledge and immediately apply practical infection control measures in their units.

Additionally, leveraging AI-driven tools, such as Blue Mirror, has significantly boosted hand hygiene compliance and proper PPE usage. By providing real-time feedback, simulation-based learning, and performance analytics, AI has transformed training from theoretical to highly practical and measurable outcomes.

Environmental hygiene also stood out as a critical factor. Enhanced cleaning protocols, proper waste management, and improved monitoring systems helped reduce risks and maintain safer care environments.

Finally, collaboration across roles ,Doctors ,nurses, technicians, infection control specialists, and leadership proved essential. When teams work together with a shared commitment to hygiene, the impact on patient safety and care quality is remarkable.

2025 has shown that integrating advanced technology like AI with education and collaboration is a game-changer for healthcare hygiene, making infection prevention smarter, more efficient, and life-saving.

Mona Harbali, Food Safety Manager, Lavoya 

The year 2025 has been a pivotal one for food safety, marked by rapid innovation, regulatory evolution, and renewed focus on consumer trust. One of the most significant lessons has been the importance of strengthening digital traceability. With supply chains becoming more global and complex, the adoption of AI-driven monitoring systems and blockchain-based tracking has demonstrated how technology can dramatically reduce response times during contamination incidents and improve transparency from farm to fork.

Another key learning is the growing need for harmonized regulations, particularly as novel ingredients, alternative proteins, and functional foods continue to expand in the market. Regulators across regions have increasingly recognized that fragmented rules pose challenges for both consumer protection and industry growth. In 2025, coordinated efforts toward clearer guidance and risk-based frameworks have shown promising progress.

We also learned that consumer expectations around food safety, sustainability, and labelling are higher than ever. Public demand for clean labels and responsibly sourced ingredients has pushed companies to adopt stronger self-monitoring programs and invest in preventive controls.

Finally, 2025 highlighted the value of collaboration. Whether through industry partnerships, academic research, or global information-sharing networks, collective action has proven essential for managing emerging risks and building a safer, more resilient food system.

Hendriea DCosta, Food Safety Manager

It's a simple truth, there is no food safety without management and leadership support and commitment, it is what makes food safety effective within any food business. Food Safety culture is built on clear leadership commitment to it. Management support is not just limited to a comprehensive food safety policy, training, monitoring tools and equipment, it should also include yearly budgets set aside for the sole purpose of achieving these food safety targets. Budgeting for food safety ensures that it is viewed as an integral part of the operations and not just as a task to meet local regulatory requirements. 

Through the food safety mishaps reported, negligence is evident, especially when the focus is set on revenue instead of the safety of the consumer. Leadership focused on consumer safety helps foster an environment where employees feel responsible for identifying and addressing food safety risks. When management sets food safety objectives and a clear budget to meet those objectives for the year whether through training, monitoring or testing, it signals that food safety is every staff's priority. In addition to that, consistent communication about standards, audits, and continuous improvement further strengthens this culture.

When leadership sets yearly objectives and budgets , this should include food safety tools and systems —such as HACCP plans, cleaning schedules, temperature controls, and traceability procedures— these should be effectively implemented and regularly reviewed. Depending on the size and nature of the business, adequate staff to ensure food safety should also be a part of the system to ensure systems are effective. In the event of any incident, a supportive leadership goes a long way, the focus is on early detection, transparency and effective handling of suspected food. Ultimately, food safety has to be viewed as an integral part of any business, it should not just be a local requirement that needs to be met, but an important part that keeps the operations running and profitable. Food safety not only affects consumers, but also affects the bottom line of any food business if it is taken for granted.