ANEW Hotels & Resorts has acquired the African-owned hospitality management and marketing company, Fortis Hotel Group.

“We’re thrilled to announce that we have found our match in the Fortis brand and concluded an agreement this week to acquire an additional six properties, bringing the ANEW stable to 10 hotels and resorts countrywide. We feel this acquisition shows confidence not only in the sector but in the country as well,” said CEO of ANEW, Clinton Armour.

“The past few months have been extremely challenging as far as trading goes, but we’re encouraged by the glimmers of hope we have for the ANEW brand moving forward.”

Armour added that ANEW had been actively looking for additional properties to expand the ANEW footprint for the past two years. And we were determined to find the right properties and partners in order to grow the brand effectively and sustainably.

“The Fortis culture is very similar to that of ANEW and the synergies of culture, people and technology made the team-up a natural fit,” Armour said. “The Fortis portfolio is well-positioned, with the right number of hotel keys per hotel (approximately 600 in total) and gives ANEW an immediate national footprint, in many key nodes, which we were after. The ANEW Group will now manage just under 1 000 keys.”

Armour said the group had also made a significant investment in state-of-the-art technology and systems, providing efficiencies of scale, which can be duplicated across the group.

“Fortis Chairman, Grant McLachlan and I have been talking for some time, about joining forces. Both groups are three- to four-star full-service hotels and the synergy of combining the brands had merit.”

The hotels and resorts are: Hunters Rest in Rustenburg, Highveld and Witbank Hotels in Emalahleni, the Capital and Manor Hatfield Hotels in Pretoria and Malaga Hotel in Sycamore. Fortis will transition to the ANEW brand over the next few months, with the first reveal on September 1.

ANEW Group Operations Manager, Kevin Burley, said the new grouping strengthened the role of family-owned and -run hotels, “with a distinct ethos and passion for personalised service delivery”. 

“Unlike many of our competitors and a lot of the more corporate groups, our structures are flat, making collaboration and the ability to make changes quickly, much easier.”