Orbis Hotel Group, the largest network of hotels in Eastern Europe, aims to become the biggest player on the Romanian hotel market in the next two years, the president and CEO of the group, Gilles Clavie, told BR in an interview.
“Today, we have seven hotels in total in our network in Romania and the goal of Orbis – we are already the leader in the region and we want to be the leader of each country where we are. This is the case for the main part of the countries, and not for Romania yet. When you know that the leader is having like 11-13 hotels, we are not so far from this.
We have a pipeline of openings in the next 4 years, making us think that it will not take us more than 2 years to take over this leading position,” Clavie told BR.
This year, Orbis, whose main shareholder is Europe’s largest hotel group Accor, plans to open a Mercure Hotel in Brasov and an Ibis Styles unit in Arad. In 2019, the group aims to open an Ibis Styles Hotel in Bucharest.
Clavie added that that Ploiesti, Pitesti, Oradea, Craiova, Cluj-Napoca and Iasi are the cities in which Orbis should have a network. He explained that the hotels in these locations could be run through franchise and management system contracts. The executive added that the same strategy would be rolled out for Brasov and Arad.
In the first nine months of this year, Orbis Group registered a 8.6 percent increase of its revenues to EUR 237.2 million, compared to the same period of last year. The group also recorded a 2 percentage point increase of its occupancy rate to 73.2 percent. The revenue per room went up by 11.2 percent to EUR 39.3. The group’s income before tax rose by 14.3 percent to EUR 42 million in the same period.
“In Romania we still have margin to grow, in terms of volume because the occupancy rate is still slightly below the average of the group, and here we can have room for improvement,” Clavie told BR.
You can read more about the plans of Orbis Hotel Group in the print version of Business Review magazine, which will be published later this month.
Ovidiu Posirca