JLL Hotels expands into Africa

Nijnens will focus on providing a comprehensive sector specific advisory offering in Sub-Saharan Africa, and will lead the firm's new regional hotel and hospitality outpost in Johannesburg. Nijnens will partner with Mark Bradford, Chairman of JLL's regional Sub-Saharan Africa operation, to serve the firm's current and prospective client base, as well as integrating with JLL's 100-strong EMEA Hotels team.

"We see the expansion of our hotels service offering in Sub-Saharan Africa as an excellent opportunity to provide our clients with advice across the real estate asset classes," said Mark Bradford, Chairman of JLL Sub-Saharan Africa. "JLL has identified Sub-Saharan Africa as a priority region for long term growth and we have seen an exceptionally positive response from our global clients to our regional offering."

Hotel development

"Sub-Saharan Africa has incredible hotel development potential with favourable economic, demographic and industry trends.There is an increasing interest in this region from many global players including investors, developers and operators with many looking for the right market entry strategy to allow them to benefit from the potential of the region," said Jon Hubbard, Head of Investor Services EMEA for JLL Hotels. "To date we have already provided advisory and transaction services to clients in 22 markets in Africa and the establishment of our office in Johannesburg will allow us to further develop our on-the-ground expertise for clients."

In his role, Nijnens will assist clients in a suite of services including strategic consulting, transactional advisory, corporate structuring, operator selection, management contract negotiations, feasibility studies and asset management.

Nijnens comes to JLL Hotels from a multi-branded hotel operator based in South Africa. Prior to hotel operations, Nijnens headed up acquisitions and corporate finance for a listed Real Estate Investment Trust in South Africa and prior this he was based at Horwath HTL focusing on Africa. He completed his Bachelors in Business Administration in Hotel Management at the Hotel School The Hague in the Netherlands with a focus on finance. He completed further studies in real estate, company law and finance. He brings more than ten years of transactional and advisory experience in Sub-Saharan Africa to the firm.

"The opening of our new office in Johannesburg and the hiring of Xander Nijnens to lead the JLL Hotels' Sub-Saharan Africa operations reinforces our presence in, and commitment to, Africa," said Hubbard. "With the opening of this office we now have a presence in every region around the globe."

Nijnens concluded, "Sub-Saharan Africa is an exciting and emerging region for the hotels and hospitality industry with a highly diverse sector across the region. In establishing a presence we aim to facilitate cross-border capital flows into the sector and assist in attracting investment into the region for our global and regional clients. JLL has an excellent track record of assisting clients in both emerging and developed hotel markets and I am excited to be able to bring this level of expertise to this region as well."