Three world-renown hotel franchises plan to build more than 40 Western-style hotels in Ukraine during the next several years.
France’s Accor, the American InterContinental Hotels Group and Belgium’s Rezidor Hotel Group already launched nine projects, with three targeted for 2009.
While Ukraine’s hosting of the upcoming EURO 2012 football championship has raised interest in the market, hotel experts said the new projects are meant to fill growing overall demand and offer higher quality in a country where most hotels are Soviet renovations.
“EURO 2012 will last only one month,” said Alexis Delaroff, director of operations for Accor Russia and the CIS. “Our management contracts are signed for 20 years.”
Accor is currently working with Ukrainian business partners to build its five-star Sofitel brand hotel and two three-star Ibis hotels in Kyiv.
Delaroff declined to identify the local hotel operators backing the projects, or how much has been invested.
Accor also plans to build four-star hotels in Ukraine’s “millionyks,” or cities with more than one million residents (Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Odesa and Kharkiv), as well as Ibis hotels in smaller cities, Delaroff said.
He stressed Accor’s advance into the Ukrainian market was motivated by more than just the EURO 2012 football championship.
The Rezidor Hotel Group, which already operates one hotel in the country, Kyiv’s Radisson SAS, announced the most ambitious expansion plans of the three hotel chains.
The Belgian company plans to open 11 Radisson hotels and 16 Park Inn hotels across the country, said Darren Blanchard, business development director for the Rezidor Hotel Group.
Like Accor, Rezidor will operate the hotels under management contracts with local partners.
“Three more Rezidor hotels are under active development and another six hotels are in the advanced planning stage,” Blanchard said. He didn’t disclose the level of investment.
The company also operates the five-plus-star Regent and five-star Missoni hotel brands.
“In Kyiv, we will develop all four of our hotel brands,” Blanchard said, adding that Radisson SAS and Park Inn hotels will be opened in many cities, including Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Yalta and Lviv, while Park Inn hotels will be opened in other smaller Ukrainian cities.
Meanwhile, the InterContinental Hotels Group is backing two hotel projects in Kyiv, a Holiday Inn and a five-star InterContinental hotel.
Developer Toronto Kyiv will complete construction of the Holiday Inn in 2009, said Alexander Shchukin, the company’s deputy general director.
In addition to the InterContinental, developer Yaroslaviv Val will also build a fivestar Fairmont brand hotel in Kyiv by the end of 2009 at an investment of about $150 million.
Nearly 1.5 million tourists visited Ukraine in 2007, a 20 percent yearonyear increase, according to Ukraine’s State Statistics Committee.
More business travelers are also arriving, in line with larger inflows of foreign investment since the Orange Revolution of 2004.
More than 100 hotels currently operate in Kyiv, but the lion’s share are below threestar quality.
Kyiv offers only four fivestar hotels – the Hyatt Regency, Premier Palace, Radisson SAS Hotel and Opera Hotel.
