Minor Hotels sees further growth potential in Africa, with a target of 50 hotels on the continent in the next five years, says Sir Richard Hawkins, Regional Director Hotel Operations Africa at Minor Hotels.
The multi-billion-rand plan will treble the group’s current footprint with high-end hotels planned for Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos and Abuja in Nigeria and Ndola in Zambia.
The group’s tactic is to negotiate management deals with hotels of 150 bedrooms or so, with the possibility of taking equity at a later point. No fixed budget has been allocated, but with each management deal likely to cost about R225 million, the potential investment is in excess of R11bn.
Minor Hotels is keen to establish a presence in South Africa through business hotels in Johannesburg, business and leisure hotels in Cape Town, and leisure hotels in the Western Cape. This will build on the R679.5m deal Minor Hotels struck with Sun International in 2014, when it opened an office in Johannesburg after buying a stake in eight Sun International properties. The group took over the hotels attached to Sun casinos in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia, and rebranded them as Anantara and AVANI properties.
Currently under negotiation are two business hotels in Ndola in Zambia’s copper belt, and a small chain of hotels in Bulawayo, Harare and Victoria Falls.
Hawkins believes Africa’s hospitality industry is poised for some unprecedented growth. “Africa has the infrastructure, it has 1.2-billion people, it’s got the resources that the rest of the world wants, and an emerging middle class which has money and is willing to spend it. We want to be there to receive them,” he says.
Three of the group’s brands are currently present on the continent – Anantara, AVANI and Elewana Collection. The boutique PER AQUUM brand will make its first appearance in the region in 2017, when the luxury hotel Essque Zalu Zanzibar on the north-east coast of that island, is rebranded accordingly.
In North Africa two new Anantara resorts are under development - Anantara Al Houara Tangier Resort in Morocco and the Anantara Tozeur Resort in Tunisia.
Fo more, visit the Minor Hotels website.
