Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted one of the leading hotel groups in the country to target expansion elsewhere.
Ribas Hotels Group currently manages 26 properties with another 20 hotels under design and construction. It both operates hotels and owns franchises and has more than 1000 rooms.
According to CEO and founder Artur Lupashko the firm’s turnover has more than doubled in recent years (rising from $8 million to $18 million between 2020 and 2021) but its ambitious expansion plans have been thwarted by the war.
Hotels located in regions where active hostilities are taking place remain closed. However, some are still open and the company is continuing to work on developments in the west of the country.
Lupashko explained to Hospitality Insights that it was the conflict that prompted an acceleration of its regional expansion plans.
“[It] was this period that gave us the impetus to move further into the European market. Now we are looking for hotels there that we plan to rent and reformat into hotels of the Ribas chain. Thus, Ribas Hotels Group will pay taxes in Ukraine, supporting the country,” he said.
Ribas recently signed a joint venture agreement to open its first hotel in Austria later this year and is actively looking at other countries.
“At the moment we are considering hotels in Poland, Romania, Austria, Germany, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Thailand,” Lupashko said.
Working with stakeholders
To fuel its growth plans Ribas is actively promoting its representation both in Ukraine and elsewhere, leading to inbound requests from investors and owners.
Lupashko described the process for getting schemes off the ground:
“After analyzing the Ukrainian market, we saw that only a few companies are implementing these projects in our country. Therefore, my team and I developed a value proposition for developers on how we can strengthen them by jointly implementing the project.
Our team, together with partners from a development company, developed a value proposition in four evenings: what difficulties we can solve, what we can do and how much we can charge for it. We packaged it, launched a promo and sold it as a service to empower developers to create apart-hotels and apartment buildings with a hotel operator.
Our goal was to secure our position in the information space as a company that offers value in the form of hospitality expertise and brand strength in the market for development companies in the creation of apart-hotels and apartment buildings.
A month later, we met with key developers in Ukraine. And three months after we started talking about our service, we signed the first contract. We are still negotiating and several agreements are at the signing stage."
In 2021, Ribas raised $20 million for new hotels, and in 2022, contacts were signed for almost $45 million, although some of these projects are now on pause.
Brand development
Ribas currently has 5 brands operating across different segments of the market.
- Ribas Hotels – four-star hotels with 50 rooms.
- Ribas Rooms Hotels – three-star hotels with 25-50 rooms, focused on a business audience.
- WOL Home + Hotel - apart-hotels, which include co-working spaces, a fitness clubs
- 2be hotels – three-star hotels with 25-50 rooms, focused on business travelers.
- Mandra Glamping – an open-air hospitality brand
In its home market of Ukraine it competes with the likes of Premier Hotels and Resorts and Reikartz Hotel Group.