The NanChang Hotel in Nairobi’s Westlands. NATION | Diana Ngila
What you need to know:
Chinese cuisine has been gaining currency locally, fuelled by Kenya’s expanding middle class with higher disposable incomes and growing appetite for the finer things in life, including exotic food and drinks.
Chinese investors have set up a four-star hotel in Nairobi that is seeking to capture the growing number of Sino expatriates, tourists and business travellers to Kenya. The Sh700 million luxury NanChang Hotel located in Westlands is offering Chinese cuisine and has Chinese-themed guestrooms.
The 40-room hotel has three conference rooms and could benefit from Chinese corporates in Kenya seeking to hold meetings and workshops. NanChang said it will be promoting the art of group dining – which is common in China and Asia – at the hotel’s 10 private dining rooms.
“We have ventured in the private dining concept, which is the new selling point in Nairobi, where people meet as they dine. We have 10 private dining rooms and we will do more soon,” said Hilary Siele, the general manager. “We are multi-cuisine, but authentic Chinese is our selling point and differentiator.”
Chinese cuisine has been gaining currency locally, fuelled by Kenya’s expanding middle class with higher disposable incomes and growing appetite for the finer things in life, including exotic food and drinks.
The high-end hotel also features a spa and wellness centre offering Chinese and Asian-inspired therapies, a gym and bar. It will also provide outside catering, banqueting and events management.
The opening of NanChang Hotel comes at a time when a host of Chinese multinationals have set up their regional hubs in Kenya and won multiple multi-billion shilling tenders, especially in infrastructure development.
Chinese tourists topped the list of visitors to the world-renowned Maasai Mara National Reserve at 20,303 holidaymakers last year to outnumber those from traditional source markets of Europe.
Chinese firms including Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, UnionPay, Beiqi Foton, Chery Automobile, Sinopec, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC Group), China Wu Yi and China Road and Bridge Corporation have also set up base in Nairobi. Others are SinoHydro Group, Great Wall Drilling Company, China Overseas Ltd, Jiangsu International Group, China Sichuan International Cooperation and Guangxi Hydroelectric Construction Bureau.
The hotel’s name – Nanchang – takes after the capital of Jiangxi Province, located in south-eastern China. The hotel is owned by Chinese businessmen through an investment vehicle dubbed Nanchang Investment Company.
The chairman of the investment company is Li Wenhua, the managing director is Windy Xu while Liu Zhen is a director.
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