Radisson goes on SA safari
Radisson Hotel Group plans to have 25 hotels in SA in the next five years and will open its first safari-styled offering in Hoedspruit in Limpopo before the end of the year.
The Hoedspruit hotel and another that is scheduled to open in Middelburg, Mpumalanga, towards the end of 2023 will take the total to 16.
Part of Radisson’s expansion will target smaller cities, and safari and resort areas, Ramsay Rankoussi, the group’s head of development for Africa, said in an interview this week.
“There is lots of potential in the secondary cities. There is also demand for safari offerings and we want to expand into that market as well,” he said.
The hotel in Middelburg will have a convention centre that will also cater for exhibitions. “We want to provide the platform for people to meet and do business,” Rankoussi said.
With the festive season approaching, the hospitality industry is looking for a muchneeded boost.
Before the Covid pandemic, SA’s tourism industry generated about 740,000 direct jobs and more than 1.5-million indirectly. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that 100-million tourism-related jobs had been lost globally as a result of the pandemic, including nearly 8-million in Africa.
Rankoussi noted that besides leisure travel, SA’s tourism industry also relied heavily on international business.
According to Stats SA, there were 581,375 foreign travellers to SA in June this year, from 572,870 in May.
Rankoussi said the hospitality industry was confident about a return to growth for the first time in more than two years, boosted by airlines increasing the number of flights and adding new routes.
While international inbound travel is still the key to recovery, there has been a growing trend in domestic leisure travel, he said.
“Post-Covid, leisure and domestic travel is coming back strongly. It is expected to rise this summer, especially as more people return to visit family,” he said. “We now see people travel for longer and also in groups ... because we miss those connections.
“International travel remains a priority but we have a responsibility to provide offerings to the local market,” he added.
In a statement last week, the Tourism Business Council of SA said the sector’s current performance was about 85% of 2019. “Understanding that some of our key source markets have been slow to recover, domestic travel is still strong,” it said.
For JSE-listed hotel group City Lodge, which owns brands such as Town Lodge and Courtyard, the leisure market now comprises a much larger proportion of its total guests than business stays.
Commenting on its financial results statement for the year to end-June, the group said this was due to a new blend of business and leisure travel.
The company said occupancies and room rates continued to edge towards preCovid levels of 2019. South African hotels recorded occupancies of 53% in July 2022 and 52% in August 2022. On September 18 they had risen to 56%.
There have also been strong signs of recovery for Radisson, with the company just 10% below pre-Covid trading levels. The acceleration of meetings and events had been a “positive surprise”, said Rankoussi. “We are now doing more revenue in exhibitions and events than we did pre-Covid in SA.”
Revenue for 2022 was on track to also doubling that of a year earlier, he said. “We are getting closer to 2019 numbers ... we anticipate by early next year we will recover to pre-Covid levels.”
Radisson operates various branded hotels catering to different markets from the middle to the top end. It is also expanding in Africa, having opened hotels in Madagascar, Ghana, Egypt, South Sudan and Zambia earlier this year.
“We are dedicated to expanding across the region, with SA as one of our focus markets. Since 2020 ... [we have] opened more than 16 hotels and 3,000 rooms and signed over more than 25 hotels representing more than 4,800 additional rooms,” Rankoussi said. The group is aiming for 150 hotels in Africa by 2025, up from 100, he added.