Continental builds $8 million hotel in Constanta

Continental SA Company is hoping to begin construction of a new three-star hotel in Constanta at the end of this year, a hotel worth more than $8 million, Nicolae Fertig, chairman of the company operating the Continental chain told Ziarul Financiar.

The hotel will operate under the Novotel brand, one of the brands of the Accor international group, with which Continental has also worked on Ibis Hotel (the former Nord Hotel) in Bucharest.

The investment actually being made is up to the ruling of two courts, which should be delivered by October, according to Fertig. The old Continental Hotel was to be taken down and be replaced by a new hotel.

The Prefect’s Office in Constanta halted works in 1996, though, so that while waiting for the situation to be cleared up, the company in 1998 bought another unfinished building in Constanta for $2.2 million to use its structure for the construction of the new hotel. Continental is the largest hotel chain in Romania, which consists in nine hotels in Bucharest (2), Arad, Cluj, Oradea, Sibiu, Suceava, Targu-Mures and Turnu Severin, a motel in Portile de Fier and a villa in Cluj.

The company was established in 1991 in order to operate all the hotels bearing the Continental name in Romania in a chain system and was fully privatised in 1995. The company last year made some nine million dollars in turnover, while the total investments made by the group in its ten years in business amount to more than $40 million.