Money travels around the world

Munich. Crises, wars and disasters primarily stamp the picture of Africa negatively. However, hotel chains have long ago cast an eye on this market that still promises much growth. Now Michael Thalmair, a Masters graduate of the Faculty of Tourism at the University of Munich, has looked deeply into ten well-chosen African capitals and has analysed the hotel chain industry there with the support of Zarges of Freyberg Hotel Consulting. With the examined capitals, Accra and Pretoria, among others, fell into excellent conditions for investment. Extracts from the study indicate two cities with great potential and two others with great challenges.

Lausanne. How many people know that there are 49 nation states in sub-Saharan Africa? Of course, most of these countries are quite unattractive for hotel development due to rickety infrastructure, corruption, bureaucratic red tape, poor sanitary conditions and lack of personal safety and security. Nevertheless, in spite of the immense challenges facing hotel operators in the region, development is going forward at an accelerating pace, due in large part to a significant pickup in economic growth in recent years, particularly in the countries with important energy resources, like Nigeria, Angola and more recently Ghana.