In terms of hotel management, we run 3 hotels in Libya; they are all 4 star hotels. We have 3 hotels under construction, 2 in Tripoli and 1 in Misrata. The Tripoli hotels will have around 400 rooms on the airport access roads. The Misrata hotel will have 295 rooms.
We work in other sectors such as the oil field sector. We do business with some oil companies; we provide maintenance of their camps, pipelines, roads etc. Thobacts Hotel Tripoli entrance
There is also an investment side to our company; we are trying to get a license for one of the Islamic banks in Libya. We are still waiting for the license from the Libyan Central Bank. As you can see there are many branches to our company. As a group we hope to develop over the next 5 years to cover many sectors in Libya. At the moment we have approximately 263 employees. A new firm that we have is a consulting and engineering company.
Regarding the hotel industry in Libya, what is the outlook for this sector? You mentioned the statistic that Tripoli has only 3,000 rooms.
Going back to the topic of the media, if the media offered a better view of Libya then maybe we would have a stronger hotel industry with the 100,000 rooms that we should have. The problem is that the media is going against Libya, and this is what the outside world sees. In my opinion, we need a lot of investment in hotel management and of all guest and hospitality companies in Libya.
Currently there are very few hospitality management companies in Libya. In terms of investment in rooms and hotels, a lot more investment is required.
So we can expect in the near future a squeeze in prices but when the situation stabilises many people will see that there is business going on in Libya and they will flock in creating a big boom. Do you predict this happening?
Actually over the last year we have had an average occupation rate of over 72%. This is only one year after the civil war. So personally I think the hotel business in Libya is doing quite well. We had a construction fair in Tripoli and during those 2 weeks we had 100% occupation of our hotels there. This is a good sign for business.