Minor Hotel Group (MHG) has revealed significant plans to grow its business in Africa.
The hotel group has officially opened a regional office in Johannesburg to represent its ten properties in Southern Africa. The opening of the new office is a strategic move for MHG, which will enable it to strengthen its position and maximise opportunities within Africa.
“Now that we have set up an office in Johannesburg, expansion will become easier,” says CEO, Dillip Rajakarier, noting that the group continues to look for opportunities to add to its portfolio of 26 hotels in Africa.
“Our goal is to have at least 50 hotels in different locations in the next five years,” he adds.
Former Sun International senior executive Sir Richard Hawkins has been appointed as Regional Director Hotel Operations: Africa. Specifically, MHG sees significant opportunity to launch its Tivoli brand in Africa because of the link between the brand’s origin in Portugal and former Portuguese colonies on the continent.
Looking at the group’s current properties, five hotels in Southern Africa were rebranded to MHG’s AVANI brand at the beginning of July. The five properties form part of the portfolio in which MHG invested a total of R679,5m in its strategic partnership with Sun International, announced in August last year.
The 212-key Zambezi Sun in Zambia has been rebranded to AVANI Victoria Falls Resort; the 196-key Gaborone Sun in Botswana has become AVANI Gaborone Resort & Casino; the 158-key Lesotho Sun and 105-key Maseru Sun, both in Lesotho, have been rebranded to AVANI Lesotho Hotel & Casino and AVANI Maseru Hotel respectively, and the 173-key Kalahari Sands in Namibia has reflagged to AVANI Windhoek Hotel & Casino. The sixth property in the portfolio, the Royal Livingstone Resort, will not be rebranded.
Rajakarier is highly positive about MHG’s joint venture with Sun International, saying that as Sun International places greater emphasis on managing casino operations and MHG’s core focus is on hotel management, marketing and distribution, there is considerable opportunity for more partnerships of this nature.
“In this way, we are able to grow together,” he says.
