Radisson cranks up African rollout

The Radisson Hotel Group (https://www.RadissonHotelGroup.com/) is one of the largest hotel groups in Africa with almost 100 hotels in operation and under development, and with the ambition to grow its presence across the continent to over 150 hotels by 2025.

Based in Dubai, Ramsay Rankoussi has been with the company for more than six years and now leads Radisson Hotel Group’s growth in Africa. The appointment reinforces Radisson Hotel Group’s confidence that Africa continues to be a region of growth.

With the addition of Daniel Trappler as Senior Director, Development for Sub-Sahara, the company becomes increasingly relevant to owners. He brings a unique set of skills to the investment community. He is one of the few specialists in hotel transactions and capital markets, dedicated to Africa. Trappler’s strong understanding of the region unlocks access to a network of financial institutions which represents the biggest challenge across the continent, in terms of deal structuring and hotel openings.

Radisson Hotel Group’s development and growth strategy in Africa follows a two-fold approach. The first part concentrates on focus countries while the second centers around creating key hubs. By creating a mass city scale development strategy with a focus on key countries and surrounding markets including Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, the group’s ‘hub approach’ ensures synergy among neighboring countries and creates further value for its hotels, in terms of both development and operations. Each member of Radisson Hotel Group’s development team is a leader in this approach because of their geographical proximity as well as their local cultural knowledge and linguistic understanding of each focus market.

Asked about this new vision, Elie Younes, Chief Development Officer for the group says, “Africa has always been at the forefront of our growth journey and we have recently adopted a new tailored strategy across the continent, reflecting the needs of the market and also underlining our ambitions to accelerate our presence in all key cities. I am very pleased with Ramsay’s new role overseeing our development in Africa. Over the last 6 years, Ramsay has proven to be a key asset to our development team, and with the appointment of Daniel, we become increasingly relevant to our owners and investment partners. We look forward to developing our presence even further and contributing to the local community through job creation and additional positive knock-on effects of investment.”

The targeted territories where the group is focused on growing its presence include the Maghreb; West Africa with Senegal and Ivory Coast; Central Africa with Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo; East Africa with Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania; and finally, specific countries within the Southern African Development Community such as Angola, Mauritius, Mozambique and Zambia.

Ramsay Rankoussi, the group’s Head of Development for Africa said, “This is a tremendous opportunity to further accelerate our growth in Africa and I am pleased to be surrounded by the best team. We have ensured a geographical alignment in our resources and optimized our response time with deal experts in every market we cover. The addition of Daniel to the team unlocks a new horizon where Radisson Hotel Group will be able to further assist our partners in debt and equity raising, but we will also leverage our complete skillset in addressing cross-regional synergies from financial to construction solutions to ensure we always remain relevant to our owners.

What really sets us apart, is our pragmatic design approach and our transparency throughout the process, in combination with our continuous guidance throughout each phase, including construction and financing. We are always quick to provide answers and support.”