By Times Reporter
Marriott International tops this year’s table for the most planned
new hotel rooms under construction in Africa, according to the
influential annual hotel pipeline survey by W Hospitality Group.
Details of the report will be one of the key discussions at the
Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF), which the Kenyan government
recently announced will return to Nairobi, in October this year.
Marriott International currently has a development pipeline of 93
new hotels comprising 17,708 rooms in Africa. Almost 50% of those rooms –
8,587 – are already under construction.
The Hilton chain is ranked second, with 6,352 rooms under
construction, and the Radisson Hotel Group is third with 4,840 rooms
currently being built.
Most of fourth-placed AccorHotel’s deals are fairly new, signed in
2016 and 2017, and therefore it is not surprising that only 36 per cent
of rooms in its pipeline are under construction.
Best Western has just over 91 per cent of its pipeline rooms onsite.
The W Hospitality Group ranking for individual hotel brands has
Radisson Blu with the largest number of rooms under construction –
beating the Hilton brand by over 300 rooms. Hilton has two other brands
in the Top 10, Hilton Garden Inn and DoubleTree by Hilton – boosted by
the chain’s US$50 million Hilton Africa Growth Initiative.
This year’s pipeline report, now in its 10th edition, has 41
contributors, reporting 418 deals with over 100 brands. Year-on-year
performance for Africa in 2018 shows growth, but more muted than in
recent years – 25% growth in the number of pipeline rooms in 2015; 19%
in 2016, and 13% in 2017, much the same as the 13.5 per cent growth in
2018.
The overall pipeline for hotel chains in Africa looks healthy for
the future. Notably, Mangalis, a new hotel brand launched in 2011, has
already managed to build a significant pipeline, with 1,746 rooms in 14
hotels, growing the existing portfolio of 425 rooms in 3 hotels by more
than four times. Currently five of the 14 hotels in the pipeline are
under construction.
But there is a word of caution from W Hospitality Group’s Managing
Director, Trevor Ward: “Of the total 76,322 rooms in the African
pipeline, almost 34,000 rooms are said by the chains to have scheduled
openings this year and in 2019. The reality on ground, however, is that
4,000 of those rooms were not even under construction as at the time of
our data collection - which was the first quarter of 2018! It would
not therefore be amiss of us to suggest that there is a degree of
over-optimism on the part of the chains regarding their expansion
plans,”
AHIF, which is supported by the Kenyan Ministry of Tourism and
Wildlife, is attended by leading international hotel investors, business
leaders and politicians. It has a proven track-record of driving
investment into tourism projects, infrastructure and hotel development
across Africa.
Matthew Weihs, Managing Director of Bench Events, AHIF’s organiser,
said: “This report from W Hospitality Group contains the sort of hard
data that serious investors want to see. It, and other analyses from
numerous expert advisers to the industry, will be the core content that
makes AHIF a must-attend event, alongside unrivalled networking
opportunities.”
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