Romanian company Dentotal Investment, owned by local entrepreneurs, which recently opened the first Mercure hotel in Romania, aims to recover its investment in up to 10 years. The company invested some EUR 9 million in the hotel.

“This includes everything from the land to the room decorations. We estimate that a reasonable period to recover our investment would be 8 to 10 years,“ said Bogdan Dogariu, the administrator of Dentotal Investment, the local firm that owns the hotel. Garanti Bank financed some 65% of the investment with a long-term loan.

Mercure is a midscale hotel brand, part of French hotel group Accor. Polish group Orbis, Accor’s strategic partner in the Central and Eastern European region operates the Mercure hotel in Bucharest, which is a four-star unit.

“We had our operational (soft) opening in November 2014 and since then we have had several nights with 100% occupancy rate,” said Alina Fugaciu, the general manager of the Mercure Bucharest City Center. “Only this month we’ve had more than seven days with over 95% occupancy rate,” Fugaciu told Romania-Insider.com.

She said the hotel’s target for this year is to reach an occupancy rate in line with the four-star hotel segment in Bucharest, which is over 60%. As Bucharest is mainly a business destination, almost two thirds of the hotel’s clients are business and only a little over a third are leisure. About 60% of the clients are foreign, and 40% are Romanians, according to Fugaciu.

“Our clients are mostly business, but we also have weekend group reservations and the city break packages have started to become more visible,” she said. The cultural events segment is also growing, she added.

Mercure Bucharest City Center is a boutique hotel whose theme is inspired from classical music. This is in line with the hotel’s location, on George Enescu Street in downtown Bucharest, close to the Romanian Athenaeum. The hotel has 114 guest rooms and three conference rooms. It also has a bar and a restaurant, as well as an underground parking with 30 parking spaces.

Polish group Orbis, which took over French group Accor’s operations in the region at the beginning of this year, plans to expand its local operations. “Romania is a key market for our future development in the region and the opening of the first Mercure hotel in Bucharest is proof of that,” said Frank Reul, Area General Manager for Romania, Bulgaria and Macedonia with Orbis Hotel Group. He added that the Mercure brand has the potential to develop in Romania, as it is not standardised and can adapt to various formats.

Reul is currently looking for opportunities to expand the Orbis network in larger cities in Romania, with over 200,000 inhabitants, as well as in popular mountain resorts.

Orbis manages seven hotels in Romania with over 1,300 rooms. These include four Ibis hotels, one Pullman, one Novotel and the recently inaugurated Mercure. Six of the hotels are in Bucharest, and one is in Sibiu.

Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com