The favourable response to Safari Kid Nursery's arrival in the UAE has led the international chain to announce an expansion programme that will see it operating in a number of other emirates by 2020.

"With the growth in the UAE and as it gears towards 2020 we feel that the growing population will have an ever-increasing demand for early childhood education" said Umair Tariq managing director of Safari Kid Middle East and Africa.

"Our future expansion plans for the UAE include opening five more centres by 2017 and it acting as a hub for our growth in both the Middle East Africa and Central Asia. Our view is that the UAE itself could potentially be a 10-15 school market for us in the next five years." he added.

"We are fully geared towards opening further centres as the correct opportunities present themselves in terms of the right catchment areas and where we can have a high meaningful impact in the community. We are actively exploring openings in Abu Dhabi this year and looking at opportunities in the other emirates as well by 2017" he added.

Safari Kid has been one of the fastest-growing privately-owned nursery and pre-school franchises in the United States and the growth trajectory is now being taken forward globally in Asia as well.

With the infrastructure diverse community and travel linkages available from the UAE Tariq noted that the brand wanted to establish its flagship premises and regional headquarters in the UAE.

The establishment of the first flagship premises in the UAE is to facilitate the establishment of a model centre which shall be the hub for the brand's planned growth in the Middle East Africa and Central Asia regions.

"Dubai and the UAE are ideally located to be at the centre for coverage of the regions and establishing a regional headquarters for centralising operational training and infrastructure requirements in the long run as well as providing a springboard for our educational development aspirations" he said.

"In addition while there have been a number of nurseries opening up in the UAE in the last few years we still feel that there is not enough competition for quality and established international operators can still carve out a great niche for themselves with their unique offering."

Asked about the response to the nursery's opening in the UAE Tariq said: "Even though we have only started over the summer with our first full term from September we have been overwhelmed by the response to Safari Kid and our programme. In fact it is fair to say that this is the best start to a pre-school that we have had in our international network ever. In fact we are already running full on a number of classes with waiting lists on a few programmes and are looking at ways at expanding our offering in order to accommodate the high demand for our unique programme."

"We have had excellent feedback from all our current parents and from all prospective parents and we feel we should be fully occupied by early next year hence we are encouraging parents to come and register as early as possible" Tariq advised. "Our fees are in line with other offerings in Dubai ranging from Dh7500 to Dh15000 per term depending on the number of days a child enrolls to the timings they take up as we provide a high degree of flexibility to parents to work around their schedules."

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