Under the deal, the 76-room Hotel Piramida will join the Mercure hotel chain, while the 71-room Hotel Orel will become an Ibis Style hotel chain facility. The international hotel group AccorHotels forayed into the Slovenian market by signing franchise agreements with two Maribor hotels owned by tourism company Terme Maribor on Thursday.
The French group, which is also interested in other parts of the country, in particular the capital, is entering the Slovenian market through its Eastern European partner Orbis Hotel Group.
Becoming part of the Ibis Styles and Mercure chains respectively in 2018 will be the three-star hotel Orel in the very centre of Marbor and the four-star Piramida, located close to the central bus and train stations.
This will make the two hotels part of a global group, which includes almost 4,200 hotels in 95 countries. Andrej Rakovič of Terme Maribor said Maribor’s largest tourism company decided for the move above all because it can help promotion in the tourism market and boost foreign visitor numbers, as guests trust the brands involved and their quality of services.
Terme Maribor, which owns three more hotels in Maribor and also manages three hotels on the nearby Pohorje hills, has been struggling after it got a Russian owner in 2012. Rakovič hopes the change will help reverse the negative trend. Orbis is the biggest hotel network in Poland and Eastern Europe with more than 120 properties. According to the company’s head of development Frank Reul, Orbis already has agreements to enter 40 more hotels on five new markets in the coming three years. He explained that these were franchise agreements and not ownership investment and that Orbis is also interested in this type of cooperation in other parts of Slovenia.