African pension funds are beginning to show more interest in investing in hotel real estate, according to Andrew McLachlan, senior vice president of business development for Africa and the Indian Ocean at Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group. McLachlan says the hotel operator – which owns the brands Radisson Blu and Park Inn and has a presence in 29 countries on the continent – has been talking with pension funds in a handful of African markets that are looking at acquiring hotel properties. “If you track [hotel real estate as an asset class] over a 10-year period, it actually outperforms commercial, residential, or light industrial real estate,” he told How we made it in Africa. “In many of these countries we see a lot of funds have been accumulating in these [pension] funds, and they need to look at good real estate to invest in – and in many of these markets there isn’t a lot of choice of real estate to invest in. In North America and Europe, these hotel properties are typically owned by real estate investment trusts (REITs) and pension funds.

Source: The North Africa Journal February 22, 2017 15:11 UTC