UKRAINE Groupe du Louvre has signed an exclusive agreement with Universal Development and Construction Holding to construct and operate at least six new Campanile hotels in Ukraine, marking Louvre’s debut in the country.
The partnership will invest €54 million over two years, with plans to open the hotels by September 2012. Construction will commence in the second quarter of this year. Ranging from 120 to 220 guestrooms, the hotels will be built in Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkov.
Universal Development has worked in the real estate market in Ukraine since 1998. “This is our first project to build 3-star hotels in Ukraine, and we are delighted to form this partnership with the international hotel operator Louvre Hotels,” says Universal Development CEO Leonid Bogdanov. “Their top-quality product will allow us to offer branded, good-value hotels across the Ukrainian market. The hotel market is severely under-supplied when compared with our neighbors in Eastern Europe, and we are confident that this new brand will be well received.”
Entry into the Ukraine market represents a huge opportunity to expand, says Pierre-Frédéric Roulot, president of Groupe du Louvre’s hotel division. ” The budget hotel market is small and still underdeveloped [in Ukraine], presenting strong growth prospects for our brands,” he says. “Furthermore, our experience in Poland will allow us to deploy operations efficiently in Ukraine building on the expertise already gained in Eastern Europe.”