Corporate watch: Azalai Hotels, a Malian multinational
A multinational from Mali sounds like a contradiction in terms. But the Azalai Hotels chain is just that.
Businessman Mossadeck Bally got into hotels 20 years ago. He now presides over a chain of six landmark properties in four countries, with a sheaf of expansion plans. He’s not yet Africa’s Conrad Hilton. But he has built a thriving group recently valued at over €60m, employing 800 people in some of the world’s poorest states. Continue reading »
Malia Group: spreading risk in the Middle East
Opening the only five-star hotel in Iraq two years ago was a bold move by any standards. Throw in marketing cigarette makers in Lebanon and distributing Shell Lubricants in Iraq, and Malia Group looks like a controversial risk-taker. Continue reading »
Peru tourism: on the up
Peru has cashed in from tourism in recent years thanks to a clever strategy of exploiting its biodiversity, exquisite food and Inca legacy.
Now hotels chains, with Hilton Worldwide and Marriott International in the lead, are to invest as much as $1.76bn over the next three years as tourism is skyrocketing in the Andean country. Continue reading »
China hotels: less is more?
With all the new purportedly top-quality hotels popping up in China, what’s the guarantee of service and taste? Very little, according to Clement Kwok, the chief executive of Hong Kong & Shanghai Hotels, which is placing an emphasis on quality over quantity.
Kwok criticised the star-rating system, as well as the rapid hotel expansion in China and other emerging markets by competitors during a media lunch at the company’s flagship Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. Continue reading »
Brazil hotels: growing pains
You would think that building hotels in Brazil should be a straightforward affair.
With the country set to host the World Cup in 2014 and the summer Olympics in 2016, Embratur, the government’s tourism arm, reckoned it would need to expand hotel capacity by at least 20 per cent to accommodate the expected influx of visitors.
So boom time for hoteliers right? Not exactly, according to Kirk Kinsell, who heads up the Americas division for InterContinental Hotels Group. Continue reading »
Playboy in India: glamour, not nudity
The magazine may not be available yet, but Playboy plans to open in India. That’s right, the magazine famous for nudity – and underrated for it’s articles – is going to open retail outlets, clubs, hotels and fashion cafés, according to the Economic Times.
This is in a country whose film industry has only recently begun showing committed couples kissing. The same country where anything – from a couple’s celebrating Valentine’s Day to an impromptu kiss between a famous Buddhist and a Celebrity Big Brother contestant – can spark outrage and protest. Continue reading »
Mozambique: young country welcomes the older tourist
In a sign of Mozambique’s emergence as a middle-market tourism destination, Britain’s benchmark over-50s package holiday organiser, Saga, is to run tours in the country next year.
It’s a positive development for an industry the government wants to develop as a major foreign exchange earner, but Mozambique has a way to go before it starts squeezing as much money from its visitors as its regional rivals. Continue reading »
India’s Sahara goes to Beverly Hills
Aim for the Hollywood sign, and then head about 9 miles southeast.
India’s Sahara Group is in the initial stages of talks to buy a majority stake in the Beverly Hilton Hotel. While he would not confirm the exact details, the Economic Times reported on Wednesday that the company was in talks to pay around $340m for a 55 per cent stake from US-based Oasis West Realty.
The hotel – whose ballroom holds the Golden Globe Awards each year – won’t be Sahara’s first foray into iconic luxury hotels. Earlier this year it bought a controlling stake in New York’s famed Plaza Hotel for $570m; the company also bought London’s Grosvenor House Hotel for $726m in 2010. Continue reading »
[video] IHG confident about China
Richard Solomons, chief executive of InterContinental Hotel Group, the world’s largest hotel group by rooms, says he remains confident about China despite its slowing growth.
Accor: bye US, hola South America
Accor on Monday gave its clearest signal yet that it sees its future in emerging markets by snapping up the South American hotel portfolio of Mexico’s Grupo Posadas for $275m.
The move comes less than two months after the French hotel group sold its underperforming Motel 6 chain of US budget hotels to Blackstone in a $1.9bn deal and will see Accor join rivals such as Hilton, Starwood, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) and Marriott in the race for EM hotel assets. Continue reading »
Accor targets Indonesia’s 2nd tier cities
Most foreign visitors to Indonesia never make it out of Jakarta, the capital, or the resort island of Bali.
But Accor, the Paris-based hotel group that owns the Novotel and Ibis brands, is pinning its Indonesian expansion hopes on the growth of secondary cities like Balikpapan, Makassar, Lampung and Pekanbaru, which are thriving thanks to the ongoing commodities boom. Continue reading »
International hotel chains are increasing their presence in Africa, but getting the buildings constructed isn’t getting any easier.
At the end of February, there were 208 signed deals for new international hotel projects on the continent. At the same point last year, there were 159 total projects in the pipeline, according to an industry report. That represents 38,074 individual rooms, up from 31,559 in 2011. That’s the aim, but the reality might be different. Continue reading »
Here’s a US company that’s not in oil and gas but is treating the Gulf very seriously.
As the FT reports, Frits van Paasschen, chief executive of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, together with more than a dozen of his top executives, will be based in Dubai for a month next year, a far cry from the company’s headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. The team will hope to get to grips with Starwood’s ambitious goals in the Middle East, where it plans to expand its business 60 per cent in the coming five years. Continue reading »
Accor eyes opportunities in India
Accor, Europe’s biggest hotel chain by number of rooms, has joined the ranks of those looking east as a strategy for growth.
The group hopes to tap into the swelling number of business and leisure travelers to and within Asia – which after having hit 650m in 2011, is expected to account for 30 per cent of global traffic by 2014, according to aviation body IATA. Continue reading »
Arab hotels: a flight to safety?
Tourism in Egypt and Tunisia was battered by last year’s Arab Spring: but could the North African countries’ loss be Oman’s gain?
It seems so, according to a report released on Tuesday by Hotels.com. A survey of more than 140,000 properties worldwide found that Luxor and Sharm El Sheikh, the popular Egyptian destinations, and Tunis, the Tunisan Capital, were the regions in which hotel prices fell the most over 2011. Oman, however, was an altogether different story. Prices there rose by nearly a fifth – thanks largely to a growing number of visitors. Continue reading »
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