Pre-2010 investment in hotels and other infrastructure in and around Cape Town’s Central City, can only boost the area’s residential sector.

So says Mick Joyce, regional MD for Pam Golding Properties, following the news of yet another hotel planned for the CBD area – this one an ”Express by Holiday Inn”, a brand owned by the prestigious InterContinental Hotels Group.

The new Cape Town hotel is planned for St George’s Mall and will have a 161-room capacity. It brings to at least six the number of new hotels in the planning stages or already under construction in the Central City and surrounding areas such as Green Point and Sea Point.

Joyce says this growth in the area’s hotel sector is another show of confidence in the Central City, and will lead to increased visitor traffic into the West City Precinct in particular – boosting demand for a bustling nightlife with restaurants, clubs and other upmarket entertainment venues.

This in turn will feed demand for the already rapidly-expanding residential property sector, where numerous office-to-apartment conversions have now reached completion and are seeing their owners take occupation.

Joyce: “The amount of construction either planned or already underway in the CBD,” he says, “is testament to the growing status of the Central City as a vibrant and trendy place to live and play.

Joyce concludes that the ongoing building activity in the Central City can only have positive spin-offs for other sectors of our economy, as well as further feeding the booming construction industry, which grew more than 20 percent in the first quarter of 2007, and which is predicted by some analysts to double in size by 2013.

“The result is more investment in infrastructure, and more job creation,” says Joyce. “And as tourist awareness grows around the 2010 World Cup, visitor numbers are on the rise and flights to Cape Town are increasingly full.

It is only fitting that a substantial number of these 2010 World Cup guests should base themselves in the very heart of our city, enabling them to enjoy the new vibey urban lifestyle which is taking hold.”

Molo Says: "If you're looking for the recent New Hotels in Cape Town, new hotels in Cape Town's inner city are The Adderley Hotel and The Mandela Rhodes self catering holiday apartments, which are luxury apartments next to Greenmarket Square with its Park Inn Hotel.

New hotels in Cape Town that are close to the convention centre: Protea North Wharf and the City Lodge Hotel at the entrance to the waterfront .

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