Source close to the Kuwaiti Kharafi Group in Egypt said that the company is considering an offer for one of the hotels it owns in Marsa Alam.
The sources added that the hotel the company would like to sell comes with a capacity of 210 rooms, and it is run by Blue Sky Tourism, along with another hotel, and they are both considered two of the largest investments in the region.
A private bank purchased two hotels owned by the group in 2015, worth $125m, and two hotels remained.
The sources said that the company does not plan to exit the tourism activity in the upcoming period, however, it desires to inject new investments through partnerships with tourism development companies in the areas it obtained from the Ministry of Tour
ism, estimated to be 20m sqm. Kharafi is one of the largest Arab investors in the tourism sector in Egypt, injecting $2.1bn to establish the Marsa Alam Airport, which is managed in accordance with the build-operate-transfer system for 40 years. Investors have estimated the value
of the projects owned by the group to be around $3bn, distributed over four hotels, and two of them were sold. Additionally, there is Marina Porto Ghaleb near Marsa Alam, with a capacity of 1,050 yachts on a water area of 277,000 sqm, in addition to a berth of 5,300 metres, and a tourism housing project.
One of the investors in Marsa Alam said that the group has a plan to establish six new hotels with a capacity of 1,800 rooms, which may make it sell one of its hotels to provide the necessary liquidity for new projects.
He said that currently there is disparity in tourist occupancy in the region, ranging from 25% to 64%, how- ever, there has been noticeable improvement over the past three years, and growth is expected in winter.
Inbound tourism in Egypt increased over the past seven months to 6.1 mil- lion tourists, with 42% growth com- pared to the same period last year.
“Kharafi selling one of its hotels does not mean exiting the sector given the company’s desire to develop the rest of the areas it owns in Marsa Alam, which is still a large and promising portfolio,” he added.
