With development pipeline of 93 new hotels comprising 17,708 rooms in Africa, 50 percent of which are already under construction, Marriot International leads Africa’s hotel growth.
The Bethesda United States of America-based hotel chain, which currently operates 100 hotels and 13,708 rooms across the African market, looks to double its presence in Africa, hence toping this year’s table for the most planned new hotel rooms under construction in Africa, according to the 2018 edition of the annual hotel survey by W Hospitality Group.
Aside the acquisitions of Protea Hotel Group in 2013 and Starwood Group in 2016, Marriot International is fuelling its expansion plans in Africa with the over 17,000 pipeline rooms of which 8,587 rooms are already under construction with the likes of Marriot Accra, Sheraton Bamako opening second quarter of this year.
Trailing behind Marriot is the Hilton chain, which ranked second, with 6,352 rooms under construction, while the Radisson Hotel Group is third with 4,840 rooms currently being built across Africa.
Most of the deals by Accor Hotel, which ranked fourth in the survey, according to the influential annual hotel pipeline survey by W Hospitality Group, are fairly new, signed in 2016 and 2017, and therefore it is not surprising that only 36 percent of rooms in its pipeline are under construction. Best Western has just over 91 percent of its pipeline rooms onsite. Louvre and Meliã both have all their pipeline rooms under construction.
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 $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 percent growth in the number of pipeline rooms in 2015; 19 percent in 2016, and 13 percent in 2017, much the same as the 13.5 percent growth in 2018.
On a good note, 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 Trevor Ward, managing director, W Hospitality Group. He noted that, “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.”
The managing director of W Hospitality also assured hospitality investors that details of the 2018 annual report would be one of the key discussions at the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF), which the Kenyan Ministry of Wildlife & Tourism recently announced will return to Nairobi, in October this year.
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.
Meanwhile, Matthew Weihs, managing director, 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.”
