Pestana and Ronaldo to open hotel in Marrakech

Soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal’s leading hotel chain Pestana are set to open a new hotel in Marrakech in 2019.

CR7 – a trademark of the Real Madrid and Portugal star’s initials and shirt number – and Pestana Hotel Group will invest €40 million in the four-star, 168-room hotel in Morocco. They will rent and manage the hotel for 20 years, according Pestana Hotel Group’s chief development officer Jose Roquette.

The project will be financed and owned by Moroccan investor M Avenue.

The hotel in Marrakech will be the fifth under the Pestana CR7 Lifestyle hotels brand, which already operates properties in Lisbon and in Ronaldo’s homeland of Madeira.

The other two hotels, still under construction, are due to open in Madrid and New York later this year.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Dionísio Pestana

Roquette expects the brand to continue to grow, with the number of hotels likely to double within three to five years. Ibiza and Milan are among the potential locations for new properties.

The Portuguese hotelier also hopes to expand further in Morocco – it already has a hotel in Casablanca and is opening a four-star hotel in Marrakech.

Pestana hope the joint venture will help open new markets in Asia and the Middle East, where Ronaldo is extremely popular, as well as reinforce the hotel group’s expansion into Spain and the US.

In a statement issued to Media CR7, Ronaldo said: “I wanted to be in the hotel industry for quite a while and the opportunity happened quite naturally as a result of the relationship with the owner and chairman of the Pestana Hotel Group, Dionísio Pestana.

“We met a few years ago and we gradually converted a mutual admiration into a business project that is meaningful for both.”