Business
Luanda Wants Flagship Hotel For $7 Billion Waterfront Project
Hotel chains including Hilton and Marriott International Inc., owner of the Ritz-Carlton and Renaissance brands, are expanding in Africa to take advantage of demand for business travel and rising disposable income. Neither are in Angola, where hotel investment has been mostly limited to companies from Portugal, the former colonial ruler of Angola. These hotel brands include TD Hotels’s Tropico and the Epic Sana Luanda, run by Lisbon-based Sana Hotels.
Angola is perceived as one of the most difficult countries in the world in which to do business, placing 153rd out of 177 countries on Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index. It ranked 179th of 189 countries in the 2014 World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index. “The major challenge for hotels will be in education,” Baia de Luanda’s Martins said. Martin also stated, “They know this and that they’ll have to train everyone to be service-oriented and professional.”
When Marriott bought Cape Town-based Protea Hospitality Holdings in April for $200 million, it almost doubled its rooms in Africa to about 23,000, Bloomberg reports. A spokeswoman for Marriott declined to comment on the company’s plans for Angola. A
spokeswoman for Hilton didn’t return Bloomberg’s e-mailed request for comment.
Source: AFK Insider
