Austria Today

23rd August 2002

Following the sell-off of Vienna's Hilton Hotel last year, Mohamed Bin Issa Al-Jaber, a renowned Arab investor, has reportedly purchased the five- star Vienna hotel, ANA Grand.

Swissair's sale of the Hilton Hotel next to the city park to the Soravia and Dichand families last year surprised many observers of the Vienna hotel scene. The sale may turn out to have been the first of many, however. A report in Die Presse states that All-Nippon Airways (ANA), the owner of Vienna's ANA Grand Hotel on the Kärtner Ring, has sold it to Arab investor Mohamed Bin Issa Al-Jaber.

A contract between ANA and Al-Jaber's JJW Hotel Management Group and Betriebs GmbH is reportedly going to be signed today. The purchase price is rumoured to be in the neighbourhood of 100 million €. The legal firm Kerres & Diwok is handling the deal for Al-Jaber and his company.

Austrian real-estate tycoon and billa supermarket-chain founder karl Wlaschek was reportedly interested in purchasing the ANA Grand Hotel earlier this year but may have balked at the asking price, reported to have then been 130 million €.

Al-Jaber may be interested in other acquisitions in Vienna, according to Die Presse. He is reportedly interested in turning a building across from the ANA Grand into an annex of sorts.

ANNA has reportedly been suffering losses in its hotel business and has therefore decided to sell a number of its hotels. Besides the ANA Grand, it has disposed of holdings in Washington, San Francisco and Hawaii.

Al-Jaber has a business in Dubai that has some 40 four-and five-star hotels in different European cities, mostly in France and Great Britain. Al-Jaber's Jadawel International in Saudi Arabia was one of its top twenty business last year.

The five-star ANA Grand, opened in 1994, has 205 rooms, 30 of which are suites, offering a total of 410 beds. The neighbouring, exclusive Ringsträssen-Galerien shopping complex only adds to the hotel's glamour.