Egypt has the largest number of hotels under development in Africa, recording 85 hotels comprising of over 21.3k rooms, accounting for more than 25% of all new planned hotels in Africa in Q1 of 2022, reports W Hospitality Group’s latest survey results.

The annual survey recorded a record 42 global and regional (African) contributors, reporting on a pipeline of hotel development activity totaling around 80,300 rooms in 447 hotels, in 42 of Africa’s 54 countries as of Q1 2022.

A statement by the group noted that the main findings of the African hotel chain development pipeline survey could be summed up to 4 words, “Egypt, Morocco, Accor and Marriott.”

Following Egypt in terms of total hotel development in the pipeline, Morocco has 7,209 rooms in development, spread across 50 new hotels; Nigeria has 5,619 rooms in 33 hotels, Ethiopia has 5,206 rooms spread across 29 hotels and Cape Verde has 4,639 rooms in 17 hotels.

In terms of number of rooms physically under construction, Egypt and Morocco continue to lead the pack with 5,577 and 6,142 rooms respectively. Ethiopia follows them with 3,871 rooms, Cape Verde at 3,016, and Nigeria with 2,544.

Around 71% of Egypt’s projects were in the planning stage, reflecting a “young pipeline” of projects, with 20 hotels (with a combined 5.3K rooms) being signed off on last year alone.

In terms of hotel chain development, Accor and Marriot dominated with both representing a large chunk of the entire pipeline at 25% each.

According to the report, Accor has 20,857 rooms in development, spread over 107 properties; Marriott has 20,248 rooms spread over 103 properties; followed by Hilton in third place with around half as many rooms, 10,505 in 55 hotels.

“The chains anticipate that 200 new hotels are expected to open this year and next, although their expectations can sometimes be over-optimistic!” said Trevor Ward, Managing Director at W Hospitality Group.

Ward pointed out that he was surprised that the survey showed “that the majority of investment is going into upscale, upper upscale and luxury hotels, when there is very strong demand across Africa for decent quality branded budget and midscale hotels.”