Tourism Abu Dhabi’s Adtic invests with Accor in Egyptian hotel By Edmund Bower November 21, 2024, 1:44 PM Kian Chow/Unsplash Egypt is hoping to increase annual tourist numbers from last year’s record of 15 million to 25 million by 2030 Sofitel ‘Legend’ will open near Giza Abu Dhabi Tourism Company deal Adtic allocates project $100m The Abu Dhabi Tourism Investment Company (Adtic) has signed an agreement with the French hospitality company Accor to open a Sofitel hotel near the Giza Necropolis outside Cairo. Adtic, which is 84 percent owned by the Abu Dhabi Development Fund and 10 percent by the Abu Dhabi National Hotels Company, has allocated $100 million for the Sofitel Legend Pyramids Giza, a price that does not include the cost of the land. Work on the 303-room hotel is slated to begin before the end of the year with an expected opening date of May 2027. It will be the second Sofitel Legend hotel in Egypt after the Legend Old Cataract in Aswan, a British hotel built in 1899 which featured in Agatha Christie’s mystery Death on the Nile. AccorThe Giza hotel will have 303 rooms and be 500m from the new Grand Egyptian Museum The Legend brand, which Sofitel describes as “not mere hotels” but “living legends”, includes the 400-year-old Santa Clara in Columbia, Amsterdam’s The Grand, and the Sofitel Legend People’s Grand in Xian which served as an official state guest house in China. The Mozart is also scheduled to open in Prague in 2027, bringing the total number of hotels in the series, including Pyramids Giza, to eight. The Giza hotel will stand 500 metres away from the new Grand Egyptian Museum, which held its soft opening last month. The hotel will have direct views of the Pyramids. Plan announced to build six new hotels in Egypt Wars have skewed effects on Middle East tourism Infrastructure needed to support Egypt’s tourism ambitions Egypt is hoping to increase annual tourist numbers from last year’s record of 15 million to 25 million by 2030, a target revised down from 30 million due to ongoing instability in the region. As part of this effort, it is targeting construction of 240,000 to 250,000 new hotel rooms, which would more than double the country’s stock. Total hotel rooms in Egypt currently stand at about 225,000.
