A French company began construction work on Tuesday on a $15 million luxury hotel in Nineveh’s Shallalat area, 10 km north of Mosul, according to AKnews.

The Investment Commission’s media spokesman told the agency that the 200-room hotel will be the first of its kind in the region.

“The implementation of the project comes after the contract was signed between the French firm and Nineveh province more than five months ago,” he said.

Set in 10,000 square meters of grounds, the luxury hotel will boast four restaurants, a permanent exhibition of French heritage, a large swimming pool and outdoor recreation areas.

The French company is to complete the project within 10 months.

(Source: AKnews)

The governor of Basra has laid the foundation stone for a new 120-room hotel in the city.

The new hotel, which will have 7 floors and will include two restaurants, will be built at a cost of $14 million [17 billion Iraqi dinars] on a site covering 3.5 acres.

According to the Basra Investment Commission, the project is being implemented by a Turkish company called Sadikoglu.

(Source: Basra Investment Commission)

Major U.S. hotel brands are moving into the north of Iraq, a reflection of growing economic development in the Kurdistan region of a country that most U.S. consumer brands have long avoided.

Marriott International signed agreements on Sunday with Empire Iraq to manage two new properties in Iraq’s Erbil. The agreements, signed at the newly inaugurated US Consulate in Erbil, cover a 200-room, upscale Marriott Hotels & Resorts-branded hotel and a 75-unit deluxe Marriott Executive Apartments property. Both are planned to open simultaneously in 2014.

That follows an announcement in May that Best Western International Inc. plans to open its first hotel in Erbil.

The three hotels are on pace to become the first U.S. hotel brands in modern-day Iraq. A Dubai-based hotel chain, Rotana, earlier opened in the city. Other hotel companies, such as Intercontinental Hotels Group, have said recently they would begin research on the region.

“Our view is that the commercial world is coming into Erbil,” said Ed Fuller, Marriott’s head of international lodging. “This is an emerging country.”

The interest comes as the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa has presented the hotel industry big challenges. Marriott earlier this year closed its hotel in Libya due to unrest in the country. In Egypt, the company continues to operate seven hotels. Some expansion plans have slowed while others are moving ahead, Mr. Fuller said.

Two years ago, Mr. Fuller and other Marriott executives met in Baghdad with Gen. David Petraeus, who tried to encourage the chain to open a hotel. But he felt then “it was too early.”

Faruk Group Holding, a group of companies with a diversified range of interests including telecommunications, cement manufacturing, hotels, medical services, properties, construction and IT, recently announced the upcoming launch of the first international boutique hotel, Copthorne Hotel, Baranan in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq.

The Copthorne Hotel Baranan is a four-star hotel located in the tourist district of Sulaymaniyah. Built on a site covering 1,320 m2, it has a floor area of 9,198 m2. The seven-storey hotel offers a contemporary setting with 72 guest rooms, 6 suites, 8 service rooms and 7 elevators. Amenities include meeting rooms, an all day dining restaurant, an Italian restaurant, a cigar bar and a Duplex Entertainment Center.

Commenting on the occasion, Mr. Faruk Mustafa Rasool, Chairman of Faruk Group Holding said:

“The development of the hospitality sector is an important factor as Faruk Group Holding has always been in the forefront of our country’s development. Launching Copthorne Hotel is another step in our strategic expansion plans as Iraq’s largest and most respected private company.”

Faruk Group Holding continues to invest in the hospitality sector to attract more visitors to Sulaymaniyah and provide international quality accommodation for guests and tourists from all over the world; as well as corporate clients, exhibition delegates, and other business and leisure visitors.

Faruk Group Holding created Asiacell, the largest Iraqi private company, the first and only mobile company covering all of Iraq’s 18 governorates.

Construction has commenced on the 12-storey, $100m [120 billion Iraqi dinar] Al Rawdatain five-storey hotel in Karbala in Iraq, reports Range Hospitality CEO Munaf Ali.

“The water table in Karbala is very high, which means you dig about 1m down and you hit water, so it is a long and lengthy dewatering process.

“Currently there are a number of wells pumping away for most of the day, and this will probably go on for another month or so before they carry on with all the excavation work, shoring and creating the waterproofing membrane,” says Ali.

The main contractor is the Tadbir Construction & Development (TCD) Group, which has 500 hectares of developments under construction in the Middle East.

“It has done a lot of work in the Gulf, the UAE and Iraq already. For us it was trying to find someone who already has experience and was willing to go there, and that has worked on large-scale projects in the Middle East region.”

In terms of supply-chain challenges, Ali says that while a lot of material has to be imported, “a lot of essential building materials are available.”

While the local workforce is adequate for basic construction work such as bricklaying and plastering, specialist trades such as MEP have to be imported.

“The government understands and acknowledges that there is a limited quantity of skilled labour available, and we are trying to reciprocate where we can in terms of skills transference.”

Al Rawdatain will be a steel-framed structure rather than a traditional concrete building, an area that TCD has considerable experience with.

“This is more expensive obviously, but it means the building gets built a lot faster as well. The steel structure will probably be constructed by one of the large steel fabricators here in Dubai.

“It will be built in sections and shipped over for pre-assembly on-site, where they will be pieced together as they arrive. This means we can go from ground level to 12 storeys in five to six months’ time, as opposed to building it floor by floor, and doing all the concrete work afterwards. The final build quality is also much higher with a steel-framed structure.”

The main reason for going this route is the timeframe, says Ali. “It is very important for us to be able to deliver the project on time. We are looking at the middle of 2013. We have a small grace period until the end of the year, but we are very confident we can deliver on time. Using the steel structure, we will be able to deliver on time.”

Ali is adamant that the project will adhere to international standards. “Just because it is Iraq does not mean that it lacks building standards and regulations. In fact, the bigger the project, the more stringent are the requirements.”

A particular problem that the project has had to address is the inclusion of underground fuel and water tanks in case of interruption of essential services.

(Source: Construction Week Online)

Best Western International, a leading international hotel chain, has announced its plans to open its first hotel in Erbil.

A signing ceremony was held recently with Glenn de Souza, Best Western International’s vice president international operations for Asia & the Middle East, and Halgord Azzo, CEO of Golden Mountains Company, owner of Best Western Premier Erbil Hotel.

“There are many positive points which have triggered the interest of Best Western in Iraq for its next step of brand expansion. Compared to other countries in the region, Iraq holds good promise when considering the economy, the people, the salaries and financial resources,” said de Souza.

“It is a promising destination that holds vast potential as both a major business centre and a fascinating tourism spot. With Best Western Premier Erbil Hotel, the destination will benefit from the global sales and marketing reach, revenue generation and promotional power enjoyed by Best Western.”

Construction is due to start in September, and the hotel is expected to open in the second quarter of 2014. It will be built in a prime location close to the recently built international airport, a statement said.

The hotel will offer 160 rooms in standard, junior suite, deluxe suite and executive suite categories – all appointed with the likes of free satellite TV, direct dial telephone, wireless internet access, tea/coffee set and 24 hour room service.

The hotel’s facilities will include a restaurant, lobby lounge, spa, meeting and conference facilities and a casino.

(Source: Trade Arabia)

Last August, the government announced it was making available a total of US$ 300 mn to renovate six Baghdad hotels in preparation for the Arab League Summit. The six—the ISX-listed Palestine (HPAL), Babylon (HBAY), Baghdad (HBAG), Mansour (HMAN), and Ishtar Sheraton (HISH) hotels, and the unlisted Rashid Hotel—were to receive 75% of the new funding as interest-free loans, the remaining 25% as equity injections. (See my first post on this story here.)

While the Arab League Summit, originally scheduled for last month, was recently postponed to next year, the work on the hotels appears to have gone ahead as scheduled. In fact, most of it would presumably have to have been done by now to meet the original deadline.

That being the case, you would expect to see big increases on both sides of the hotels’ balance sheets. The value of their fixed assets should have gone up as a result of the renovations while debt and shareholders’ equity should have increased by a corresponding amount of loans and equity injections.

Strangely, however, this isn’t the case for HBAY, the only one of the five listed “Arab Summit plays” to have posted its first quarter financials so far. While the company could have received as much as US$ 50 mn from the government (if the US$ 300 mn were divided evenly among the six hotels), HBAY’s balance sheet actually shrank from IQD 1.43 bn (about US$ 1.2 mn) on 3/31/10 to IQD 1.37 bn on 9/30/10 to IQD 1.07 bn on 3/31/11. (These numbers are just a fraction of the company’s IQD 53 bn market cap, by the way.)

There’s also no sign of any capital injection—paid-in capital is the same on all three dates.

Passersby report seeing a banner outside the hotel announcing that the first phase of the renovations ended April 26. The second and final phase, it says, will be completed three months after that date. Apparently money is being spent. Is it a free gift from the government?

Faruk Group Holding, a major conglomerate in Iraq, has unveiled big investment plans for the northern city of Sulaymaniyah.

According to Trade Arabia, the group with a diversified range of interests including telecommunications, cement, manufacturing, hotels, medical services, properties, construction and IT, has pumped more than $400 million into its hospitality industry alone.

Unveiling the new roadmap for Sulaymaniyah’s hospitality industry at the recent Arabian Travel Market expo, chairman Faruk Mustafa Rasool said, ‘Our aim is to make Sulaymaniyah a desired destination in the Arab world.’

‘The key hotel projects being planned include Grand Millennium Sulaymaniyah, Copthorne Hotel Baranan and Copthorne Hotel and Spa funded by more than $400 million investment,’ he noted.

He pointed out that Iraq was a promising market; with more growth potential than any other market in the world can expect to have in the next 5 to 10 years.

‘Our operations in Sulaymaniyah will support not only our entry into Iraq market but also global business community,’ he noted.

Hawre Daro Noori, CEO of Faruk Group Holding said, ‘We are from Sulaymaniyah and we are steering our city’s economy to become an industrial, telecommunications and education hub.’

‘We invite businessmen from all over the world to visit Sulaymaniyah and Iraq and have a look and perhaps start a business in our country, because we believe that Iraq is a promising market,’ he added.

Faruk Group, he said, will continue to invest in the hospitality sector to attract more visitors to Sulaymaniyah and provide international quality accommodations for guests and tourists from all over the world.

‘We will also target corporate clients, exhibition delegates, and other business and leisure visitors’, he added.

Faruk Group Holding had earlier set up Asiacell, the largest Iraqi private company and the first mobile company covering all of Iraq’s 18 governorates.

(Source: Trade Arabia)