The hotels will operate as Ibis Styles (newly introduced in Romania) and Mercure and will both be built from scratch in an investment ZF puts at EUR15 million to EUR20 million.
“Romania is one of the key markets where development will be a focus for us,” Gilles Clavie, chief executive officer of the Orbis group, told ZF.
Orbis operates 106 hotels in nine countries, including Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Latvia.
Arad and Brasov are but two cities where Orbis sees development opportunities and the group is in talks with many potential partners. The goal is to become market leader, the executive added.
Ibis Styles in Arad will be rated three stars and have 72 rooms and is scheduled for opening in the second quarter of 2017. The owner of the hotel is FAB Industry, held by Liliana Lucia Balaj, 43, from Arad, according to the Trade Registry.
The four-star Mercure Brasov Hotel & Spa will have 120 rooms and be inaugurated in late 2017. Its owner is Barbati Invest Real Estates, held by Angelo Barbato, 50, born in Naples, Italy.
Orbis chose Arad and Brasov to develop its hotel operations because the two have attracted a number of foreign investors in the past few years. Arad has automotive component manufacturers Takata, Leoni and BOS operating plans nearby.
Brasov, too, has attracted companies in this industry, but it also has companies like Olympus (dairy) and Ursus (beer), which bring their foreign managers to the city. Brasov is also an attraction for foreign and Romanian tourists, who spend their vacations there.
The group is looking at other cities for expansion: Ploiesti, Targu Mures, Cluj-Napoca, Oradea, Timisoara, Craiova. The first criterion considered is the economic development of that place, Gilles Clavie said, adding Bucharest could do with more hotels, especially those operated by international chains.
Orbis was late to arrive in Romania, but plans to catch up and become market leader in a few years, its CEO says.
“We will open mostly two, three or four-star hotels.”
The group might also introduce Ibis Budget in Romania, but for the Sofitel brand it needs to find the perfect location. The large population, the GDP growth, as well as the increase in the number of foreign and Romanian tourists makes Romania one of the best countries in the region for investments in the hotel industry, Clavie added.
Orbis manages seven hotels in Romania: four three-star Ibises, Novotel, Pullman and Mercure, the latter three rated as four stars. It owns only one, Novotel, while the rest are held by local entrepreneurs.
The Orbis group took over 38 hotels in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Romania of the Accor group in a EUR142 million deal early this year. France-based Accor owns the majority stake in Orbis S.A., which is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)