HILTON – GONE
QUORVUS COLLECTION – GONE
… AND SO THE SAGA CONTINUES …
(Posted 23rd September 2017)
Some hotel owners in Kampala enjoy the dubious reputation of being notoriously difficult to work for, requiring managers to have the ability to bend like a leaf of grass in the wind, wherever it blows from as directions often change, no one daring to ask for explanations of course.
This correspondent has since 2006 regularly reported on what was once upon a time to become the Kampala Hilton, before their General Manager designate in an almost clandestine fashion left the country in January last year, never to return and carrying the name of Hilton with him at the time in his baggage.
https://atcnews.org/2016/01/21/the-never-ending-woes-of-what-was-to-become-the-kampala-hilton-hotel/
Comments in the early stages of construction like ‘We will construct a floor a week‘ by the owners of that hotel project – because a project it still is to this day even though the outside structures have been completed for a while – still cause serious hoteliers to burst out in laughter as did a number of other full mouthed statements made over the years by the owners, all promises come and gone unfulfilled.
Earlier in the year, and against warnings not heeded, did Carlson Rezidor try to get the foot in the door and with no less than their top brand, the Quorvus Collection. At the time described here as a marriage made for divorce, did that prediction also come true as the hotel in question no longer features on the website of an otherwise very respectable global hotel management company, where however some individuals at the time threw caution into the wind, ignoring history and words of advice before they put pen to paper.
‘Property no longer represented by Quorvus’ says a quick search on their website, indicating that another global brand name has ditched the property and its owners, making it increasingly unlikely that any other global hospitality giant of repute will now touch the hotel, and not if their executives have any wit left to learn from history instead of repeating it or unless ownership first changes.
An obscure South African management company has of late been linked to the property, one which claims to have links to hotels in Kenya but a quick search also revealed that this is not so, suggesting that people of the same ilk may be coming together for yet another attempt to open at least some rooms on some floors to generate cash flow before sooner or later financial reality comes calling.
Until then does the property stand over Kampala like a permanent question mark and reminder not to look for quicksilver when searching for lasting solutions.
