Global Towers to put up three star hotel in Jaffna

Shirajiv Sirimane

Global Towers would be building a three star plus hotel in Jaffna. It would have a mixture of apartments and rooms. Vice Chairman of Global Towers Management (Pvt) Limited Nihal Samarasinghe said that they have already picked a one acre block of land to build this hotel.

"We hope to start a consortium in the mid of this year and hope to open the hotel end of next year," he told Daily News at the ITB in Berlin.

Samarasinghe who is a large shareholder of Ramada Hotel in Frankfurt said that they want to offer the concept of short term apartments to Jaffna and this was the reason for them to build this hotel in the North.

"We observed that several businessmen and foreigners are looking for long stay apartments and Global Tours in Jaffna would fill this void."

The total investment for the project is around Rs. 500 million and they hope to borrow 45%. Tilome Nanayakkara, General Manger of Global Towers Colombo said that the proposed hotel would also fill a void of high class accommodation in the North.

"We currently maintain around 65% occupancy in Colombo to maintain a higher occupancy rate in Jaffna," she said. She also said that they were also hoping to start training staff early so that they would be able to maintain high service standards which is another gray area in Jaffna.