In June 2025 hospitality investors were pricing the DRC’s business travel, not its tourism.

By Kanisa Magazine · June 2025

Radisson Hotel Group’s announcement in mid-May that it will enter the Democratic Republic of the Congo with two hotels, the 110-room Radisson Blu Kinshasa and the 97-room Radisson Hotel Lubumbashi, is a concrete hospitality signal for a country whose east is in conflict. It came while fighting in the east still dominated the country’s risk headlines.

The two facts belong together. International hotel groups are not betting on leisure travel in a country with an active conflict in the east. They are betting on the businesses and institutions that keep Kinshasa and the Copperbelt full of visitors regardless: mining houses, lenders, logistics firms, embassies and development agencies.

What was signed

One hotel for the capital’s administrative district, one for the mining capital, both after 2026.

According to the group’s press release of 16 May, the Radisson Blu Kinshasa will stand on Boulevard Colonel Tshatshi in Gombe and open in late 2026, with a lobby bar, pool bar, gym and meeting space. The Radisson Hotel Lubumbashi, with a rooftop bar and three meeting rooms, follows in mid-2027, twelve kilometres from Luano airport. Radisson counts the DRC among three new markets, with Tanzania and Conakry, and operates more than 100 hotels in Africa.

The press release does not name the owners or the investment cost, so neither can be assessed. What it makes clear is the size: small, upscale hotels, built for corporate guests and meetings rather than volume tourism.

Why security and finance set the ceiling

A hotel is a bet that the country stays open for business, and two events in June shaped that bet.

The first was the Washington peace agreement between the DRC and Rwanda, signed on 27 June. It is only a signature so far. Coverage of the signing describes commitments on hostilities, disengagement and economic integration, and no investor can underwrite eastern rooms on a ceasefire that has yet to hold.

The second was the macroeconomic frame. The IMF Board’s January approval of a 38-month lending arrangement worth US$1,729 million is the kind of external anchor a hotel owner reads before committing capital to a site in Gombe. A programme in place means the currency, inflation and reserves are being watched by someone other than the government.

Purchasing power and the currency

A franc that moved 0.05 per cent this year makes a franc-priced menu predictable.

The BCC’s weekly digest of 18 June puts the indicative rate at CDF 2,868.22 per dollar on 13 June, against CDF 2,866.88 at the end of 2024. Net reserves were US$6,741 million, equal to eleven weeks of imports, and annual inflation stood below 9 per cent. For a hotel, restaurant or events operator that buys food and fuel locally but prices rooms in dollars, a stable exchange rate is the single most important operating assumption.

Dollar pricing also defines the guest. Hotels of this class sell mostly to company accounts, so occupancy is likely to track mining and project activity and the calendar of conferences, not the household budgets that inflation hurts.

What a supplier and a franchise investor do now

Prequalify for the 2026 fit-out, and treat the east as an option, not a plan.

A hotel that opens in late 2026 starts buying furniture, kitchen equipment, linen and security services in 2025 and early 2026. Local suppliers that can document quality, deliver in dollars and meet an international operator’s standards have an opening that the arrival of a global brand creates. The first step is to ask the owner or the group’s development team for the supplier prequalification process. Caterers, laundries and facilities-management firms should do the same, because a hotel’s running costs, unlike its construction, are paid every month in a mixture of dollars and francs and reward suppliers that can invoice in either.

For investors in smaller hotels, the signal is that the market has been validated at the top and has room beneath it. Congolese owners with mid-range sites in Gombe or Lubumbashi can seek management or franchise partners now. In the east, the sensible posture is to hold options on assets, not to build, until the ceasefire has held for a full season.