More international hotel brands are heading to Kenya

HILTON GARDEN INN SET FOR Q2 OPENING NEXT YEAR NEAR JKIA IN NAIROBI

(Posted 16th March 2015)

A new 175 bedroom hotel is due to open along Mombasa road, not too far from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, in just over a year’s time. The proposed Hilton Garden Inn will be operated under the brand’s management and is hoping to tap into the business market, catering for first and last night stays, airline passengers stranded after flight delays or cancellations and is also hoping to attract airline crew business.

The hotel will be owned according to information received from Nairobi yesterday by the proprietors of the Modern Reliance company which has given part of its warehouse and manufacturing plot to develop the hotel.

From visual inspection when last driving into Nairobi is the building well advanced but, as all hoteliers know, will the devil be in the interior finishing when the main structure is completed in order to meet the timeframe of opening the hotel.

Along and off the main highway from the city of Nairobi to the airport and on to Mombasa have several hotels opened or been open for some time, starting from the Eka Hotel, the slightly off highway 5 star Boma Hotel and the adjoining 3 star Boma Inn Nairobi, the Ole Sereni Hotel and the Panari Hotel which was the first to be established along the airport highway. National airline Kenya Airways had also expressed interest to construct their own hotel near the airport but not much has happened since then with more details on location, size and opening still awaited. Inspite of a tourism downturn in Kenya over the past two years have hotels in the capital done better than country average, mainly fueled by a steady flow of business travelers, conferences and meetings. The addition of more internationally branded properties – the next to open is the Radisson Blu in Nairobi – has put Nairobi at the forefront of hotel developments in Africa in recent years, also a vote of confidence by investors, both foreign and local, in the future of Kenya’s economic development.