The African Fairmont

With the opening at the end of last November of the Fairmont Zanzibar, the Canadian group made a spectacular entry into East Africa. The partnership signed in 2005 between Kingdom Hotels Investment, IFA Hotels and the upscale hotel began to bear its fruit. In the last two months, the group’s collection on the continent grew rapidly when renovation was complete for the hotels previously owned by the group Lonrho in Kenya (the historic Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, the Mount Kenya Safari Club lodges, The Ark and Mara Safari Club). To offer its clientele a place to relax alongside visits to Kenya’s reserves, the brand revived Zanzibar Beach Hotel & Resort with an investment of nearly ten million euros. A one hour drive out of Stone Town, the captivating capital of the little Tanzanian island, this resort sprawls along a superb beach of fine sand. In addition to swimming in the Indian Ocean, the happy guests of its 109 rooms and suites may luxuriate around two swimming pools or participate in the many water activities offered by the property. A detail about the hotel: it houses one of Africa’s three diving centers with a decompression chamber. The hotel also has banquet and meeting rooms for the MICE segment. After Zanzibar, Fairmont is preparing to go further South with the creation during 2008 of a mega-project on KwaZulu Natal, in South Africa, for more than 200 million euros: the Fairmont Zimbali.