Accor SA is to open 60 new hotels in 14 nations in Africa in the next four years, chief executive officer for the Middle East and Africa Mark Willis said.
Over the next two years, the European hotel operator is to open over half of them in Egypt, which Willis said was rebounding after “external factors” hurt the industry.
The nation suffered a terrorist attack in 2015 when an Islamic State group affiliate blew up a Russian aircraft as it left the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in an attack that killed 224 people.
“Egypt is resurrecting after 10 years of a tough situation due to external factors, but is now improving,” Willis said in an interview in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Egypt has overtaken Kenya’s coastal region as the preferred destination for European tourists and investors.
Revenue per available Accor room has risen 20 percent year-on-year, he said.
“Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa is not at the forefront of people’s minds today,” he said.
Only one of the target hotels is to be in the East African nation.
The continent has sustained unprecedented rates of economic growth, driven chiefly by sturdy domestic demand, better macroeconomic management and improving political stability.
African nations are still under capacity as far as branded hotel supply is concerned, presenting global chains an opportunity to enhance their footprint.
Key markets in Accor’s growth plan include Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa, where it is to open 10, seven and three hotels respectively by next year.
Accor has 143 hotels in Africa, 63 of them south of the Sahara, and is to promote its Movenpick luxury brand, Willis said.
The hotel group is to fund the growth with more than US$1 billion from the Katara Hospitality Fund set up last year for sub-Saharan Africa.
Accor is so far the main investor with US$500 million, while the Qatar Investment Authority is to raise debt and partner in investments, Willis said.
It might expand through mergers, acquisitions and partnerships on the continent, including in South Africa, where Accor is already considering several opportunities, Willis said.
“We have a soft footprint in South Africa, which historically was not a focus for Accor, but it very much is today,” he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy