Limak’s tourism division is to invest around $300 million in building two hotels in southern Turkey’s Mersin and 250 million euros ($292 million) in a complex in Macedonia’s Skopje, the Turkish company’s chairman said on this week.
The construction-to-energy conglomerate has also started operating a new hotel in Turkish Northern Cyprus, Nihat Ozdemir told a news conference marking its opening.
Including the $200 million Cyprus investment, the firm had eight hotels with 7,000 beds. “Our goal is to bring our number of beds to 10,000 in five years,” Ozdemir said.
Limak would finance the Skopje retail and tourism complex through international banks. It had begun construction of the Mersin hotels using equity capital and was seeking additional forms of financing for that project, Ozdemir said.
The general coordinator of the Limak Tourism Group, Kaan Kavaloglu, said it was also in talks with a hotel group for a purchase in France’s Nice province. The company would also have another hotel investment at Istanbul’s new airport.
The city’s third airport, which Turkey says will become the biggest in the world, is due to open on Oct. 29 with initial capacity of 90 million passengers per year.
Limak, established as a construction company in 1976, is also involved in energy, cement and airport management.
It plans to start production in three power plants by the end of 2019, Ozdemir told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
(Reporting by Ceyda Caglayan and Can Sezer; Writing by Daren Butler and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by John Stonestreet – Reuters Connect.)
