Marrakech puts a dampenener on Mauritian luxury hotel group

New Mauritius Hotels owns eight hotels in Mauritius, one in the Seychelles and another in Morocco.

New Mauritius Hotels owns eight properties on the islands, including the Royal Palm. Courtesy: Beachcomber Hotels

The luxury hotel group New Mauritius Hotels (NMH) on Wednesday swung to a loss of 758 million Mauritian rupees (Dh77.6m) in the year to September 30 from a pretax profit of 230m rupees a year earlier, hit by a poor performance at its Moroccan business.

The company owns eight hotels in Mauritius, one in the Seychelles and another in Morocco.

“The poor performance of Royal Palm Marrakech (RPM) continued to significantly affect the Group results, with Beachcomber Hotel (the company which owns and operates RPM) posting a negative profit after tax of 785 million rupees,” NMH said.

NMH said it was in the final stages of negotiation with an international hotel operator with a view to handing over management of the Beachcomber Hotel to this company.

It said occupancy rates in its Mauritian hotels for the first quarter of financial 2017 were higher than last year.

Beachcomber Resorts & Hotels is expanding its golf offering through a preferred partner deal, signed on December 16 with Mont Choisy Le Golf, the newest 18-hole golf course in Mauritius, opening in November next year.

“We have five hotels and over a thousand rooms in the north of Mauritius and this partnership quickly emerged as an obvious move for us,” said the Beachcomber chief sales and marketing officer, François Venin.

With nine 18-hole courses, NMH is among the top golf destination operators. “The north of Mauritius was the only region without a golf course, but that will be rectified in November 2017 with the opening of Mont Choisy Le Golf,” the firm said.

As part of its rebranding process launched in September 2016, Beachcomber has decided to rename its two hotels situated closest to the golf course as Trou aux Biches Beachcomber Golf Resort & Spa and Canonnier Beachcomber Golf Resort & Spa.

Group revenue for the year rose to 9.6 billion rupees from 9.15bn a year ago. It posted a loss per share of 2.06 rupees compared with earnings per share of 0.29 rupees.

* Agencies

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