Dezeen promotion: architects and designers working across the Middle East and Africas are invited to submit their hotel projects to this year's AHEAD MEA awards.

The Awards for Hospitality Experience and Design (AHEAD) recognises outstanding hotel design from around the world, through a series of heats in four regions: the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa (MEA).

AHEAD MEA will look at hospitality projects from anywhere in the Middle East and Africa that have been opened or reopened between January 2017 and February 2018.

Submitted projects will be split into a range of categories: Bar, Club and Lounge; Event Spaces, Guestrooms; Hotel Renovation and Restoration; Landscaping and Outdoor Spaces; Lobby and Public Spaces; Lodges and Tented Camps; Resort Hotel; Restaurant, Spa and Wellness; Suite; Urban Hotel – Conversion; Urban Hotel – Newbuild; Visual Identity of the Year; New Concept of the Year, and the AHEAD Hotel of the Year Award.

Entries will be judged by a panel of expert hoteliers, architects, interior designers and industry commentators. The team will be headed by Marc Dardenne, chief operating officer of high-end hotel chain Jumeirah Group.

Winners will then be announced at an awards ceremony in Dubai in November, coinciding with the city's design week.

Last year, The Four Seasons Hotel Dubai International Financial Centre scooped the Hotel of the Year title. It was commended for bringing a "genuinely new sense of intimate luxury" to the city's hospitality industry.

Other winners from 2017 included the Studio RHE-designed Six Senses Zil Payson resort in the Seychelles, which has guest suites hidden amongst surrounding vegetation, and Botswana's Belmond Eagle Island Lodge, which sits on a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Entry costs 1120 AED (approximately £217) and all additional entries cost 560 (approximately £109).

The deadline for entering is 30 April 2018, with shortlisted projects set to be revealed on 29 June.

The Middle East and Africa winners will then go on to contend in AHEAD's 2019 Global Biennale, going head-to-head with champions from other regions to claim worldwide titles.