Kenya Ranked 5th in Hotel Development in Africa

An annual survey conducted by W Hospitality Group has ranked Kenya fifth best destination in Africa for hotel development.

The survey, dubbed Hotel Chain Development Pipelines in Africa ranked Egypt first, followed by Nigeria, Morocco, Ethiopia and Kenya coming in the fifth position.

The five 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.

The survey had a record 43 international and regional hotel contributors this year, covering 54 countries in North and sub-Saharan Africa, and the Indian Ocean islands.

There was a total of 75,155 branded rooms in 401 hotels are in development across the whole of Africa – a net increase of almost 11,000 rooms in the pipeline, 17 percent up from 2018.

Figures from the survey show that in North Africa the rooms pipeline is up 2.3 percent on 2018, and down 3.8 percent in sub-Saharan Africa – largely due to several of the chains “cleaning” their pipelines, deleting deals that they believe are not going to happen.

Read Also: International Arrivals Through JKIA and MIA Increased by 19% in 2018

This year, the top 10 countries accounted for 69 percent of the total hotels surveyed, and 74 percent of all the rooms.

Kenya scored 67 percent with 27 hotels and 4,232 rooms, 2,849 being onsite constructions, while Morocco and Algeria had 74 percent and 75 percent, respectively, greater progress than in Nigeria and South Africa, both of which are under 50 percent.

Nairobi was ranked fourth in terms of rooms with 3,167 after Cairo, with over 8,000 rooms in development and Addis Ababa ( 5,196) followed by Lagos, the leader for several previous years at (3,757) and then Algiers (3,107), Abuja (2,743), Dakar (2,208), Abidjan (2,102), Lusaka (1,872) and Marrakech (1,868), the last two in the top 10 for the first time.

By the end of 2017, the country had an estimated 19,100 rooms with an occupancy of 47.3 percent.

Hotel growth in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia, according to the survey, continues to be driven by international and domestic tourism.

Read Also: Political Serenity Places Kenya 5th in RMB’s Investment Destinations