Nigeria ranks first in African Hotel Valuation Index 2015

ITRealms:

The 2015 African Hotel Valuation Index has revealed that Nigeria heads the list of countries in Africa with the strongest economy, but with only 34 branded hotel bedrooms per million population, ITRealms gathered.

 This compares with 6,754 branded hotel bedrooms per million population in North America and 2,432 bedrooms per million in Europe. Ghana with 59 bedrooms and Cote d’Ivoire with 61 bedrooms also present great opportunities with very strong unmet demand.

According to a press release emanating from the Bench, the event organizers, evidence from the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) holding  in Addis Ababa showed that  the Index showed African hotel brands such as Azalai, City Lodge and Protea trading well, with a number of hotel investors showing faith in the continent.

Now in its fifth year, AHIF (September 30 to October1, 2015)  brought together 500-plus leading international hotel investors, local operators, ministers, government officials and industry experts from around 40 countries.

The immediate good news came from ForwardKeys, which monitors future travel patterns by analysing 14 million reservation transactions each day. Its analysis showed there was an increase of 6.4 per cent in international arrivals in September in Sub-Saharan Africa, reports ITRealms.

Flight bookings for the next six months suggest a sustained recovery. The data shows arrivals on-the-book (bookings for travel in future) from October 2015 to March 2016 are now running 4 per cent ahead, compared with the same period last year.

The conference also heard the latest thought leadership research paper from JLL. It found the growth drivers for the hotel sector in Africa included: improved fiscal management, favourable demographics (a population of 1.1billion, rapid urbanisation, growing middle class, rich commodity and energy resources, considerable infrastructure investment, increased tourism.

Cyriacus Nnaji/ED,OPs ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!