Americans buy hotels in Timisoara

Timisoara-based Continental Hotel has been recently bought from its former administrator and partial owner, Cornel Urcan, by an investor with double citizenship, Romanian and American. This purchase is part of a real “invasion” of investors on the hotel market in Timisoara.

Following this transaction, the company becomes the property of the American citizen who holds 90% in it, along with the leasing contract due in 2002.

‘We are currently evaluating the hotel to appraise the actual situation of the company and then we are planning to re-launch the activity by investing $2 million to begin with,” said Ioan Horti, the new general manager of Continental Timisoara Hotel. “We’ll rearrange the rooms and re-evaluate the personnel,” he added.

The main investments will consist in installing a thermal power station, air conditioning, thermopane windows and arranging the pool. All these elements will help improve the hotel’s rating from the current three stars to four, Horti says.

Continental Hotel has 167 rooms and two suites, terraces, a restaurant, a night-bar, a dinner party room and a conference room.

The hotel was the object of litigation between the management of the Continental SA Company and the former administrator of Continental Timisoara.

The Government Decision 1041/1990 thereby transferred all Continental Hotels in the country into the patrimony of Continental SA Company. “The only problem was in Timisoara, as the administrator would not relinquish it,” Nicolae Fertig, Continental SA general manager, told Ziarul Financiar.

To compel the administrator to abide by the Government decision, Continental SA filed a suit against him, which it lost by a final irrevocable court ruling.

“We are currently trying to find ways to reopen the case, because the previous court ruling was based on fake evidence,” Fertig says.

Furthermore, he added that the hotel was currently leased, but the lease was null and void because the provisions in the contract had not been observed.

Continental Chain holds 11 hotels: Continental in Bucharest, Sibiu, Targu-Mures, Cluj, Parc Continental Hotel Drobeta-Turnu Severin, Continental Astoria Arad, Arcasul Suceava, Dacia Continental Oradea, Continental Villa Cluj, Continental Motel (Portile de Fier) and Ibis Hotel (formerly known as Nord Hotel) in Bucharest.