The stars of hotel development in Africa are Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco and Ethiopia, according to the 11th annual survey by W Hospitality Group.
The four countries head the top ten by numbers of rooms in the internationally-branded hotel development pipeline, with Egypt showing 15,158 rooms in 51 new hotels.
A total of 75,155 branded rooms in 401 hotels are in development across the whole of Africa – a net increase (ignoring recent openings and taking in to account deals that have not come to fruition) of almost 11,000 rooms in the pipeline, 17% up on 2018.
The top-line figures show that in North Africa the rooms pipeline is up 2.3% on 2018, and down 3.8% in sub-Saharan Africa – largely due to several of the chains “cleaning” their pipelines, deleting deals that they believe are not going to happen. These cleaning adjustments amount to more than 12,000 rooms in 74 hotels.
Nevertheless, despite this significant adjustment, there has been growth of 51% in the total pipeline rooms since 2015 – North Africa up by 58%, and sub-Saharan Africa up by 47%.
This year, the top ten countries account for 69% of the total hotels in the survey, and 74% of the rooms.
Full details will be revealed and discussed at the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) in Addis Ababa.
