DENHAM, England — IHG Hotels & Resorts has signed a franchise agreement to rebrand three hotels in East Africa, according to an IHG news release.
IHG now has 28 hotels across five brands in Africa, with a further 22 in its pipeline to open in the next three to five years.
One of the hotels, the former 148-room City Lodge, will become the Crowne Plaza Dar es Salaam. The property is in the principal Tanzanian business center, Dar es Salaam.
Contracts were also signed for two hotels in Kenya — the 171-room City Lodge Two Rivers Mall, which now will be the Holiday Inn Two Rivers Mall, and the 127-room Fairview Nairobi, which keeps its name.
Kenyan hotel firm City Lodge sold four hotels, including the three IHG signings, in July 2022 to a partnership of United Kingdom-based investor Actis and Canada-based investor Westmont Hospitality.
According to South African news website News24, the four hotels were sold for a collective 141 million South African rand ($7.7 million), which helped to offset losses of approximately 550 million South African rand ($30.17 million) for the six months ending in December 2021.
Kenyan firm Msafiri will manage the hotels. It already has a portfolio of 12 hotels, which include traditional hotels as well as resorts, island resorts and tented camps.
Haitham Mattar, IHG’s managing director for India, Middle East and Africa, said the firm’s “expansion across Kenya and Tanzania is testament to how IHG is encouraging this potential and meeting the returning demand quickly. … An ownership that includes Actis and Westmont Hospitality is important partnership to IHG.”