Kempinski Hotels, teamed up with London-based Capital Vostok Ltd. marked on December 9 the launch of the development of a new five-star hotel in downtown Tbilisi.
 
“Five major hotel brands have decided to invest in Georgia in the last two years, and we can say that all the major brands are now in Georgia, which means that Georgia and Tbilisi has become well-established on the world map, it means more tourists,” President Saakashvili said at the presentation of the project in Tbilisi on December 9.

He said that next year Georgia will see a construction boom that will require three times more workers, “which means that we will have a huge deficit of human resources in this sector.” Saakashvili added that Sheraton will launch construction of a hotel in Adjara. The presentation of this project is planned for December 10 in Batumi.

President Saakashvili delivered a similar speech exactly a month ago when he attended a ceremony marking launch of the construction of a new five-star hotel by the InterContinental Hotels Group in downtown Tbilisi, less than two kilometers away from the venue where the Kempinski hotel will be located.

The 200-room hotel, which will be designed by Krier-Kohl Architects, is projected to be constructed by 2010. Reports say that USD 50 million is planned to be invested in the project.

The building on Rustaveli Avenue was initially designed to house the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Some reconstruction works were done for this purpose, but eventually the building was handed over to Capital Vostok Ltd – a company which operates in Georgia through its subsidiary real estate investment firm Aword.

Aword said that Capital Vostok Ltd is a British-Swiss company which was set up by City Capital Management to develop a hotel and class-A office space network in the Black Sea region.

Michael Tippin, a founder of Capital Vostok, was at the presentation in Tbilisi. He is also a founder and chief executive of Toronto-based Tippin Corporation, which according to the Canadian daily Globe and Mail, announced this summer its plans to sell its portfolio of properties in Toronto to invest in Eastern Europe.