Plaque unveiled for new five-star hotel

Daily Graphic (back page), Sat. May 15/10

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
A PLAQUE was today unveiled to mark the beginning of the construction of a five-star hotel at the former Race Course in Accra.
To be known as the Kempinski Hotel, the US$60million project will have facilities such as 269 rooms, two presidential suites, a 1,000 seating capacity banquet hall, a 3,000 square metre spa, a salon and health club, swimming pools and tennis courts.
The luxury hotel, which is scheduled for completion by January 2012, will also have three speciality restaurants and a 400 underground capacity car park.
The hotel is expected to be managed by a subsidiary of the Kempinski Group, Europe’s oldest hotelier since 1897. The facility is the first phase of a series of other projects to be located on the 32-acre plot at the old Race Course site.
The Minister of Tourism, Mrs Zita Okaikoi, who unveiled the plaque, said the gesture was a positive response by the private sector in partnering the government to make Ghana a preferred vacation and business destination in Africa.
She said it was the ministry’s strong conviction that now was the opportune time for the tourism sector to experience tremendous growth in view of the enabling environment created for investments in the sector.
Mrs Okaikoi said the ministry was poised to support private initiatives to boost tourism and make the sector play its expected role in the transformation of the country’s economy especially in foreign exchange generation, employment creation and poverty reduction.
The Managing Director of Zakhem International, one of the facilitators of the project, Mr Marwan Zakhem, said the Kempinski Hotel, which was the first phase of a project dubbed: “The Gold Coast City Project,” was designed to provide a 300,000 square metre development project, which would comprise commercial towers, residential accommodation, shopping mall, among others, over a seven-year period.