In many West African capitals, the hotels are the social centres and business hubs of the city. Look, for example, at the Hilton in Abuja, the Mövenpick in Accra, the Pullmans in Abidjan and Dakar. The lobbies are never idle, packed with informal business meetings, social encounters and, of course, guests of the hotel “chilling” together. Or alone.
Looking back in history in Europe and the USA, the origin of a hotel was as a social centre. Coffee (or more often chocolate) shops and inns became hostelries with beds in shared rooms, hostelries became hotels with ensuite rooms and suites. And the trend from social hub to a bed factory meant that the lobby, which was originally the same space as the bar and restaurant (“tavern”), became a place merely to process people as fast as possible and get them into their rooms. Job done. Lobbies became lifeless, sometimes filled with some strange art pieces (ever wondered whether that is a sculpture or a chair you can sit on?!), but not very, well, social.
The emphasis was on the room experience, the technological wizardry, the rain showers, the amazing bed, yours to buy for $1,500.
So, having “done” the rooms, the hotel chains are returning their attention to the lobby space. All that granite and marble, doing nothing for much of the day.
Hands-up who really wants to have to check in to a hotel? Stand at the barrier, sorry, front desk, in front of a staff member who considers the computer screen to be the main attraction, not you? OK, if you’re a first time visitor, you might need to go through this often-unsatisfactory experience which, in my experience, is most often occupied by the staff sorting out the mistakes that they have made on the reservation (or on check-out that they have made on the bill!). But we check in for a flight on-line, get our boarding pass and seat number on our mobile phone, and go direct to the gate. The technology is there for the airline industry, let’s see it used more in the hotel industry, and get rid of that barrier, sorry, front desk. Those without a smart phone can, well, have a little desk in the corner to wait at.
So what to do with this lobby space? Well, the intention is to make them into those hubs that I mentioned earlier, where there is constant activity and, most important for the owner, constant purchase of food, drink and other services. Sheraton have their Link@Sheraton facility, in Lagos it is right in the middle of the lobby, with computers and tables for people to meet and chat, enjoying free internet if you are staying at the hotel, but served coffee, drinks and snacks. Social activity does tend to be technologically-enabled, so people sit with their tablets, laptops and mobile phones multi-tasking – surfing, e-mailing, talking, eating, drinking, people-watching or just waiting.
Starwood’s aloft brand goes a step further, with pool tables, big-screen TVs and other leisure activities right there in the lobby. Don’t stay in your room, come down and be part of the activity, or sit and watch it in the comfort of the sidelines. Sometimes the bar is the central facility, in some cultures that is not felt to be appropriate, so it is to one side.
This activity needs to be monitored, and the spending encouraged(!). In the budget sector, from the front desk, which doubles as the bar. In the “hip” sector, the staff will circulate, perhaps showing off their tattoos and hairstyles, whilst in the upscale and deluxe sectors, the staff will be more “refined” (but please, not white gloves and tails, soooo pretentious!) – matched in each case to the customers’ expectations and aspirations.
The ambience of the lobby can be changed through the use of lighting and music. Bright lighting during the day, with soft background, for business meetings, turn down the lights and ramp up the music for the evening happenings.
An interesting facility in some hotels is the “grab-and-go” self -service food store. For apartment hotels such as Suite Novotel, which have microwaves in the rooms, the store will have heat-and-eat dishes. A microwave there in the store will enable a guest to heat and eat in the lobby. Chilled cabinets contain drinks, sandwiches and salads. Room service is another experience which can be entirely unsatisfactory, both for the guest and for the hotel (“well, how much longer will I have to wait? And you’re going to forget the ketchup again, aren’t you?”). So remove the service, and move it out of the room, to the lobby.
It’s not for everyone, and in somewhat conservative West Africa, we’re going to see these changes coming only quite slowly. Some guests want the solidity of the front desk, it’s what they are accustomed to, and don’t know what to do if it is not there. Make a guest, or potential guest, uncomfortable, and you’ve failed big time in my book.
Some guests are not in a hotel to socialise, they are there to get privacy, hide in their rooms, eat there, and perhaps hold business meetings and socialise there.
Hence the proliferation of brands from the international chains, so that they can please everyone, all of the time.
Trevor Ward
W Hospitality Group, Lagos
Trevor Ward, Managing Director, W Hospitality Group, Lagos
The international press seems to have latched on to what’s going on in the African hotel scene recently, with articles about the expansion of the major chains into hitherto “uncharted territory”. Last year we tracked over 200 new branded hotel deals with 40,000 rooms in the chains’ development pipelines. A conservative estimate of the total investment would be in the order of US$8 billion to US$10 billion! And that excludes any investment being made into unbranded hotels, and renovation of existing hotels.
But even the financial press gets confused regarding the business models that the international chains adopt when entering African hotel markets – how often have you seen headlines stating that “ABC international hotel chain is building a new hotel in ZYZ city”? A headline which is almost always inaccurate! By and large, the hotel chains do NOT invest in nor build hotels. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule – Tsogo Sun own their Southern Sun hotels in Lagos, Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, and Carlson Rezidor, through their co-owned Afrinord fund, have invested in Bamako and other locations. Even Hilton, who like most everyone else in the industry operate an Asset-light model, own a chunk of the Nairobi Hilton, but that’s a “legacy” from many years back.
So how does it work, at, for example, the InterContinental in Lagos, or the Holiday Inn in Accra?
Both brands are owned by the UK-based InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). Both hotels receive branding, marketing and distribution services from IHG. But neither hotel has a penny of investment from IHG. That’s not what (most) hotel chains do.
The InterContinental Lagos is owned by the Milan Group, and operated under a management contract by IHG, who provide management, branding and marketing services to the owner. IHG has the responsibility to manage the hotel efficiently and, hopefully, profitably, look after us as guests. But it is not their hotel, nor their business – and when things go wrong, you will, eventually, end up dealing with the owner’s lawyers, not IHG’s.
The Holiday Inn in Accra is owned by the Royal Airport Hotels Group (RAHG), and managed by them as well. There is no one in between us guests and the owner. IHG provide their branding and marketing services to RAHG under a franchise contract, but other than regular quality control audits, have no day to day input into the running of the hotel. They do not manage the operations.
RAHG believe that they have no need to pay IHG for management services, they can do it themselves – as do hundreds of thousands of hotel owners around the world, in branded (franchised) and unbranded hotels. Milan said no, we need IHG to manage the hotel as well as brand it, the benefits to them of paying management fees outweighs the amount paid.
Would the average guest know the difference between these two models of operating a hotel? No, and nor should they. That’s the point, the brand promise is a brand promise, whoever is delivering it. The franchise model, as at the Holiday Inn in Accra, is very common in the USA, and increasingly in Europe, but far less so in Africa, mainly due to the lack of management expertise that dogs the industry. To the best of my knowledge, most franchised hotels in sub-Saharan Africa are managed not by individual owners but by the major, experienced players – African Sun manage Holiday Inn franchises in Zimbabwe, Tsogo Sun manage InterContinental franchises in South Africa, UAG manage Protea franchises in Namibia, and so on.
So now you know the difference between a managed hotel and a franchise – you won’t notice any difference. So long as the brand promise is being delivered, it matters not who is doing the delivery.
Trevor Ward
W Hospitality Group, Lagos
In many West African capitals, hotels are the social centres and business hubs of the city, providing a space for a quick meeting or a catching up with friends . The lobbies of places like the Hilton Abuja (Nigeria), the Mövenpick Ambassador in Accra (Ghana), the Hotel Pullman Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire) and Hotel Pullman Dakar Teranga (Senegal) are virtually never idle. There are often informal business meetings on the go, social encounters and hotel guests milling around.
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Click here to download: An Eye on West Africa – February
There were several openings of branded hotels in sub-Saharan Africa in 2013, as the previous years’ efforts by the developers, investors and operators to “cover the map” started to come to fruition. Remember that the opening of a hotel is a joint effort – the international and regional chains very rarely put any money on the table, relying on developers and investors to build hotels for them. They, the operators, then provide their management and marketing services to generate profits for the owners of the hotel, in return for a fee.
Openings last year included Best Western in Benin, Kenya and Nigeria, Radisson Blu in Mozambique and South Africa, Kempinski in Kenya, City Lodge in Gaborone, easyHotel in South Africa and, the largest of them all, the Lagos InterContinental in Nigeria. Several others, including the Hilton in Uganda and the Kempinski in Ghana, did not open, delayed again, as are so many hotels in Africa.
At the end of 2013, two of the industry’s global giants announced new deals. Starwood, the owner of the Sheraton, Westin, Four Points and other brands, revealed that they will be managing hotels in Conakry, Nouakchott and Juba, the last-named the first branded hotel in Africa’s newest country, South Sudan. And Hilton announced that they will be managing a 350-room Hilton in Lagos, to be built by Transcorp, the owners of their Abuja hotel.
In the middle of 2013, we saw one of those rare events, a management company investing in a hotel property – Tsogo Sun, owner of the Southern Sun brand, purchased 75% of the shares in the owning company of their Lagos hotel, thus gaining both management and ownership control. The price, US$70 million, appeared “full” at the time, but it included the head lease of a large parcel of land, and the ability to exploit the potential for expansion of the hotel. Not to mention the benefit of gaining control of their own destiny, which itself has a value for a company which desires such control.
Looking forward, whilst I believe that we will still see the single-city deal such as Conakry and Juba appearing on the pipeline analysis, the majority of development is likely to be in 7 or 8 of the 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. North Africa is something of an unknown right now, as the region works through the impact of the Arab Spring. But in sub-Saharan Africa, the opportunities are huge, specifically, in my opinion, in Angola, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. That’s seven countries, with some potential also in South Africa, but to a lesser extent due to an already well-developed industry there, and sluggish economic growth.
Of these 7 or 8 countries, Nigeria has the greatest potential of them all.
Why? Because of scale. Take Juba, for example. Quite apart from the tragic civil conflict that erupted in December 2013, the size of the city, and the country, the low economic growth, the mono-sectoral economy and the lack of airlift all point to a hotel market that is likely to be completely satisfied by the planned Sheraton hotel. Of course, there will always be niches to fill, such as the boutique hotel and the economy spaces, but it is difficult to see the city sprouting Hiltons, Holiday Inns, Radisson Blus and the like to compete – it is just not big enough. And once Juba is “full”, where else in the country can developers, investors and operators go?
The same applies to so many other African countries, which have a single city, the capital, and in a few cases another commercial city, where hotels could be developed. But even the capital of several countries has very little airlift to bring in guests for the hotels.
My 7 “picks” are those countries which have the elements necessary for multi-site hotel development – multiple cities with hotel demand, a large(ish) population, a diversified or diversifying economy, higher-than-average economic growth, sufficient and growing airlift into and within the country, and increasing urbanisation.
Nigeria has 36 States, each with a State capital, plus the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) where the country’s capital Abuja is located. In addition, there are some other large urban centres, such as Warri and Eket, that are not State capitals. Many of the State capitals have an airport, with international flights operating to 5 of them. Potentially, therefore, there are 40 or more locations for hotel development, ideal for mid-market brands such as Park Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, Best Western etc. – all three of which already have hotels operating or under development in these secondary cities, with more in planning.
Angola has 18 provinces, also with capital cities, but doesn’t have the scale of Nigeria – around one tenth of the population, for example. The regional and international hotel chains have had very little success with their development ambitions in the country – certainly not for want of trying – and there is still not a single internationally-branded hotel in the country (Sana, a Portugal-based chain, have a hotel there, and also operate in Berlin). Angola is not the easiest place to do business, and developers have preferred to go it alone, with several mid-market hotels locally owned and managed throughout the country. But the potential is there.
Ghana has four or five cities outside Accra, such as Takoradi, Kumasi and Tamale, with Best Western and Protea making inroads into those locations. Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique complete the list, with such developments outside the capitals as Four Seasons in the Serengeti, Serena in Arusha and Zanzibar, Doubletree by Hilton in Zanzibar, and Park Inn by Radisson in Tete.
I remain totally confident about the prospects for the growth of the hotel industry in sub-Saharan Africa. As consultants to the various players in the hotel development process (developers, investors and operators), we are experiencing new highs in the number of enquiries we receive for our services. And these are not all in the “Top 7” – Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Botswana and others are all on the list, and our studies typically identify profitable opportunities to develop new hotels and resorts there.
As markets grow, so do investment opportunities, and whilst the tragic stories from the Central African Republic and South Sudan at the turn of the year suggest that little will happen in our industry there for some time, never say never. Sierra Leone was a failed state not that long ago, whilst currently both Hilton and Radisson Blu have hotels under construction in Freetown.
Trevor Ward
W Hospitality Group, Lagos
[spiderpowa-pdf src=”https://w-hospitalitygroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Evolution-of-Lagos-Hotel-Supply.pdf”]
Currently, the supply of international standard hotel rooms in Ikeja is extremely limited and is not sufficient to keep up with the growing demand that this area is experiencing, and should continue to experience in the future.
Download: Evolution of Lagos Hotel Supply 
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Unlike the majority of Nigerian cities, Calabar is one that has the unique potential to become a major tourist destination, if developed, branded and marketed accordingly.
Download: Secondary Hotel Markets in Nigeria
I just came into Luanda again (did someone say “masochist”?) and the left hand lane went the fastest, as it was feeding into three desks. Yes, I know, it’s a bit sad to get excited about things like this, but it keeps me going).
If you’re travelling with other people, elect the biggest one of you to get the arrivals forms, and the rest of you go and queue. Your large colleague can take all the vaccination certificates to wave one at a time, or just use one, result should be the same.
Fill in the form best you can – avoid filling in “masochism” as the reason for entry to Angola, just in case the immigration official knows the word, and has a sense of humour failure. The consequences don’t bear thinking about.
Baggage seems to arrive recently efficiently, but I can’t speak for experience. Me? Check in luggage? Don’t be silly.
After customs, and before you leave the building, there’s a Unitel mobile phone shop on the right – they’ll stiff you on the price and on the exchange rate, but who cares, if like me your UK line (O2) doesn’t roam in Angola* (except in the far north, when you can often roam onto a DR Congo network!), then with a local SIM card you’re back in the wired world. There’s a bank there for buying local currency, too (although most places in town accept dollars). No particular hassle from touts and other ne’er-do-wells when you exit, but I have always been met, so no tips about taxis, sorry.
(BREAKING NEWS February 2009 – O2 now roams in Luanda, ).
