There were a few company announcements yesterday that we missed, one specific to our City Lodge holding. We had of course been alerted to the fact that they, City Lodge were looking for a wider African footprint, wider than South Africa and Botswana, and what better place to start than in Nairobi. They bought into a family managed hotel, buying half exactly of a small company, Fairview Hotel Limited, that owns runs (and owns) two hotels in the Upper Hill area of Nairobi. Now that means nothing to me, absolutely nothing, because I do not know Nairobi at all, but there was some useful insight from a Kenyan chap down in Joburg who works for CNBC Africa, a fellow by the name of Larry Madowo, follow the link to see his twitter profile.
Larry said something that struck me, the family owned hotels were about half the price of the other more expensive mainstream hotels closer or in the CBD. And then we thought, that is exactly the City Lodge that we know. 204 rooms is less than one third of a single percent of their overall number of rooms, so this is baby steps. Again, that is classic City Lodge. What are they paying? Well, that is within the thresholds of what is reportable, but I suspect that they should have told us something. I searched through the listing requirements at breakneck speed and could not find anything as to what the percentage of the market capitalisation that is required to announce the deal. This was voluntary. But I am sure with a little patience that all will be revealed. Nice, I like this City Lodge move.