Radisson Hotel Group has bolstered its team in Africa, with the appointment of Ramsay Rankoussi as the new head of development for Africa and Daniel Trappler, senior director, development for Sub-Sahara.
The news came only a few weeks after Hilton appointed Andrew McLachlan to the role of managing director, development, Sub-Saharan Africa, commenting on the “incredible opportunity” across the continent.
At Radisson Hotel Group, the company has almost 100 hotels in operation and under development, and with the ambition to grow its presence across the continent to over 150 hotels by 2025.
Radisson Hotel Group’s development and growth strategy in Africa follows a two-fold approach. The first part concentrates on focus countries while the second centres around creating key hubs. The company said: “By creating a mass city scale development strategy with a focus on key countries and surrounding markets including Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, the group’s ‘hub approach’ ensures synergy among neighbouring countries and creates further value for its hotels, in terms of both development and operations.”
Radisson was targeting: the Maghreb; West Africa with Senegal and Ivory Coast; Central Africa with Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo; East Africa with Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania; and countries within the Southern African Development Community such as Angola, Mauritius, Mozambique and Zambia.
Elie Younes, Radisson’s CDO, said: “Africa has always been at the forefront of our growth journey and we have recently adopted a new tailored strategy across the continent, reflecting the needs of the market and also underlining our ambitions to accelerate our presence in all key cities. I am very pleased with Ramsay’s new role overseeing our development in Africa. Over the last six years, Ramsay has proven to be a key asset to our development team, and with the appointment of Daniel, we become increasingly relevant to our owners and investment partners. We look forward to developing our presence even further and contributing to the local community through job creation and additional positive knock-on effects of investment.”
At Hilton, the company has 46 hotels open in Africa across six brands with 57 further properties in the pipeline. McLachlan joined the company with over 30 years’ experience of the African hospitality market in operations and development roles, most recently as SVP development, sub-Saharan Africa at Radisson Hotel Group.
Patrick Fitzgibbon, Hilton’s SVP, development, EMEA said: “Andrew is a well-respected figure in the African hospitality industry, and it is great testament to the momentum behind Hilton that he has decided to join our team. He will work closely with the teams we have in place in Dubai, Cape Town and Nairobi to drive hotel growth, building on the milestone we reached last year of 100 properties trading or under development on the continent.”
Insight: David Harper, head of property services, Hotel Partners Africa, told us: “Radisson have always understood the potential in Africa, a continent where growth will be needed for many years to come just to service existing and latent demand. I think with the impact of Covid-19 making a number of hotel companies concentrate on consolidating existing portfolios rather than looking to expand, Radisson sense they have an opportunity to steal on a march on their competitors. Demand for hotel brands in Africa is led to some extent by existing supply, with many owners wanting to work with only brands that are well known already in Africa. So if they can steal a march now it will lead to advantages for them in the future as well.”
Stealing is certainly the theme, with Hilton nipping at Radisson’s heels. What Hilton has learned from Radisson in recent years is that, in Africa, as in those other geographies where development can be a challenge, money talks.
Radisson - then Rezidor - built up a commanding presence with the help of its Afrinord fund, but in 2017 Hilton set up its own fund committing $50m over five years. Then again you can just do what Marriott International did and buy your way in through Protea. But there aren’t many Proteas. Wait for Radisson and Hilton to build them, first.