Park Inn by Radisson is one of the recent hotels that have opened in the last one year/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 14 – The expansion of business tourism in Kenya has seen Nairobi become an attractive destination for new hotels with 2,666 rooms expected to be added in the next two years.
Nairobi takes the fourth position in terms of planned rooms while Lagos takes the lead at 4,000.
According to Jumia’s Hospitality Report Africa 2017, these are part of the 64,231 rooms in 365 hotels under construction in the continent from 2016.
The report places Marriott International, Best Western and Hilton as the leading chains which are expanding across the continent.
“Nigeria and Angola have the highest number of hotel chains, with 61 and 56 hotels respectively; accounting for almost 30 percent of the total pipelines. There are 20 percent more in 2016 and 2015,” reads the report.
Overall, the top destinations for international arrivals as of 2015 are Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Tunisia and Zimbabwe respectively.
Nairobi is among the continent’s major business destinations alongside Johannesburg, Lagos, Abidjan, Accra and Cairo.
“Destinations with strongest growth in international arrivals in 2016 were Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Ghana, Sudan and Seychelles. The leading source market for international arrivals in 2016 was Europe with 47.3 percent, while Asia Pacific was the fastest growing market with an increase of +21.7 percent from China.
