November 2 (SeeNews) - French hospitality company AccorHotels plans to open a hotel under the ibis Styles brand in Bosnia's capital Sarajevo later this month, the Novi Grad urban municipality of Sarajevo said.
The company has invested 30 million marka ($17.5 million/15.3 million euro) to acquire the former Hotel Sarajevo and increase the number of its rooms to about 200, the municipal government said in a statement on Thursday.
"This investment is very important to us, as it concerns the opening of 30 new jobs, so that 70 people will be employed at the hotel now," the mayor of Novi Grad municipality, Semir Efendic, said in the statement.
Polish-listed Orbis Hotel Group, the strategic partner of AccorHotels in Eastern Europe, and Bosnian based Tareq Hospitality signed a franchise deal under which Hotel Sarajevo will be re-branded to an ibis Styles hotel, Bosnian media reported in April.
ibis Styles is one of the brands of Accor Hotels. Orbis comprises 120 hotels and is the sole licensor of all AccorHotels brands in 16 countries including Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. It offers about 20,000 rooms.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bosnian marka)