The Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF), which is the premier hotel investment conference in Africa, attracting many prominent international hotel owners, investors, financiers, management companies and their advisers, will head back to Kenya’s capital, Nairobi later this year. AHIF will be held at the InterContinental Hotel on September 30 – October 1, 2014.
“I am delighted that we have attracted Africa’s highest profile hotel investment forum back to Nairobi. Last year, AHIF took place at the same time as the Westgate siege. Despite the atrocity, hardly anybody cancelled their trip, the conference went ahead smoothly and global tourism business leaders went out of their way to give a public vote of confidence to Kenya. At that moment of crisis, the hospitality industry demonstrated what an extremely valuable asset it is – one we must not take for granted but invest in,” Kenya’s Minister of Tourism, Phyllis Kandie, said.
AHIF 2013 was attended by 400 delegates from 20 countries, including government ministers from four African nations, the president and CEO of the World Travel and Tourism Council and scores of business leaders, representing virtually all the big players in hospitality in Africa.
“After agriculture, Tourism is Kenya’s most important industry. We are blessed with fantastic natural tourism resources: spectacular scenery, beautiful beaches and wonderful wildlife. Kenya is the only country where you have the opportunity to see ‘the big five’ – elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo and leopard in their natural habitat,” the CEO of Kenya’s Tourism Finance Corporation (TFC), Marianne Ndegwa Jordan, added.
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), it is responsible for 19 percent of total exports and 10.9 percent of total employment. It is also a sector that WTTC predicts will continue to grow at 4.5 percent per annum over the coming decade.
Kenya’s hospitality industry has been eager to capitalise on the favourable tourism outlook. The latest research by W Hospitality reveals that the country’s hotel pipeline more than doubled recently, from five hotels with 771 rooms under development in 2012 to 11 hotels with 1,469 rooms in 2013.
AHIF is organised by Bench Events, one of the world’s leading organisers of hotel investment conferences, co-hosting annual meetings in Germany, Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. These events attract the international hotel investment community, including developers, investors, management companies, tourism officials and leading advisers from around the globe, as well as industry leaders locally and regionally.
“The African economic growth story is becoming well-known. At around five percent per annum, it is a multiple of developed economies and that is appealing to international investors,” the chairman of Bench Events, Jonathan Worsley, concluded.
– Tourism-review.com
