Radisson Blu has become the fastest growing hotel brand in Africa.

This year’s W Hospitality Pipeline Report ranked Radisson Blu as the leading individual hotel brand with the largest number of hotels under construction in Africa.

“With 111 hotel brands active in Africa today, we are delighted that Radisson Blu leads the way in Africa with more hotels under development than any other hotel brand.

“Our strong growth is set to continue with the execution of our ambitious five-year development plan that will focus on scaled growth in 23 of the 60 larger cities in Africa to create operational synergies,” said Elie Younes, chief development officer, Radisson Hotel Group.

In a period of strong growth, the Radisson Hotel Group has doubled its African portfolio within the last four years, opening a new hotel every 60 days and signing a new hotel deal every 40 days.

This growth has spiked the group’s portfolio in Africa to 86 hotels (17,800 rooms) in operation and under development across 30 countries.

As part of the company’s recent rebranding to Radisson Hotel Group, a new global brand architecture was introduced, which included two new brands; Radisson Collection, positioned as the premium lifestyle and affordable luxury and Radisson as the upscale hotel brand.

Andrew Mclachlan, senior vice president, development, sub-Saharan Africa, Radisson Hotel Group, said: “We aim to add a further 50 hotels to sub-Saharan Africa, of which 65 per cent of our future hotel supply will come from our newer brands, specifically Radisson, which is positioned in the full service upscale segment, perfectly positioned between Radisson Blu in the upper upscale and Park Inn by Radisson in the upper midscale segments.

“In addition, we will selectively add a number of key Radisson Collection hotels and grow on the successful opening of RED Radisson in Cape Town in the lifestyle upscale segment of the market.”

McLachlan added “With our new brand segmentation, we have the potential to operate more than 10 hotels within cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg and Lagos providing real scale and operational synergies.

“While cities such as Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Abidjan, Dar es Salaam, Durban and Dakar have the potential to have more than five hotels under our various hotel brands.”