Tumas Group to open Hilton hotel in France

The Tumas Group is to lay the foundation stone for a €40 million Hilton International hotel in Evian, France, on October 8.

Construction work on the 175-room lakeside hotel, not far from Geneva and Lausanne, began on July 1 and the hotel is expected to open in June 2006.

Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Times last week, Tumas Group chairman George Fenech said this was the group's first such venture overseas.

"We have established a track record with our local operations and we will now use the experience we gained here, especially with the Portomaso project, to expand overseas."

Without going into detail, Mr Fenech said: "We have other projects in the pipeline. We will do them one at a time, step by step."

The spa hotel at Evian was selected following a strategy that meant the group would not experiment too much. "We did not want to go to exotic places to make a bargain," Mr Fenech said. "The property we were after would obviously cost more and the return would be lower but it would be more secure. You would not be playing with fire excessively."

Finance for the turnkey project has been arranged through a consortium of international banks, led by BNP Paribas with the full collaboration of several local banks.

The hotel is situated beside a 100-year-old spa which the Evian local council is to renovate. There is also a landing stage close buy with a ferry service that means Geneva is just 25 minutes away.

The Mayor of Evian, Marc Francina, was in Malta last week to call on Mr Fenech. With him were Philippe Baude, president of Generim, the French contractor that is to build the hotel, and Georges Dahan, president and CEO of Thed International, an engineering and development company that is also involved in the project.