Bench Events, the organiser of the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF), is launching a sister event, named the Forum sur l’Investissement Hôtelier Africain (FIHA).

The new hospitality event will focus more precisely on North and West Africa. Proceedings will be bilingual, with presentations and panel discussions led in French with translation to English.

The inaugural edition of the Forum sur l’Investissement Hôtelier Africain (FIHA) will take place in Marrakesh, Morocco during the first week of February 2019.

Morocco makes four strong arguments to attract investors because it has a stable political and economic climate, it is within short and medium haul flights from Europe, Middle East and New York.

Morocco also has investor-friendly laws, with no restriction on land ownership or repatriation of profits and fourth, it has robust infrastructure, including a major hub airport in Casablanca.

In Africa, hotel investment is booming. Hotels are core infrastructure because they are essential to attracting tourists and business people who come with foreign currency to spend and invest.

As the economic environment in Africa has become increasingly less risky in the past two or three decades and because the number of hotels per head of population is a tiny fraction of what it is in highly-developed western economies.

The growth in hotel development across Africa has consistently outstripped general economic growth - which in many African countries is currently higher than much of the rest of the world.

Bench Events previously run investment events in Morocco. The first edition of AHIF took place in Casablanca in 2011 and Bench Events staged the Morocco Tourism Investment Forum in 2013.

Outside Africa, Bench Events runs premium hospitality investment and aviation conferences across Europe, the Middle East and South America.

Other conferences by Bench Events include the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference (AHIC), The Saudi Hotel Investment Conference (SHIC), The Russia Hotel & Tourism Investment Conference (RHTIC) and the Latin American Hotel & Tourism Investment Conferences (SAHIC).