Tadelle Yimer, controversial secretary general of the Ethiopian Employers Federation (EEF), has opened Modern Hotel, built at a cost of 3.8 million Br, in Adama town.

Located 98Km east of Addis Abeba in Kebelle 11 of Adama Zone in the Oromia Regional State, the Hotel was inaugurated last Saturday, May 5, 2007. Tadelle began this venture jointly with his brother Yehualashet Asamenew, a member of the Ethiopian Diaspora in the United States (US).

Modern Hotel offers 12 rooms, a restaurant, bar, nightclub and a conference hall that has yet to reach completion. So far, the Hotel has 35 employees, which the management hopes to increase to 50 once the establishment is fully operational.

"We are hoping to create equal job opportunities for the local residents of Adama," Tadelle told Fortune. "We plan to make 50pc of our staff women."

At the inauguration event, featuring more than 200 invited guests, Tadelle stated that this was a small effort to cater to the traffic that was expected for the upcoming Millennium celebrations.

But the Hotel did not reach the point of inauguration and offering of its services without its fair share of trials.

"When construction began, there were structural mistakes that were made, so we were forced to demolish parts of the structure and start all over again," said Tadelle.
 

He stated that the kitchen and the laundry room were particularly trying during construction.

The Hotel will add an additional three storeys in the future, he added.

Tadelle is better known for his position as the secretary general of the EEF. He is also the President of the Ethiopian Hotel Owners Association, making his first investment in Ata'a Hotel, now renamed Altad Ethiopia, located in Kazanchis on Jomo Kenyatta Street.

Currently, hotels that get the most coverage of historical and other popular tourist sites are governmental. The Ghion, Ras, Wabe Shebelle, Ethiopia and Filuha hotel enterprises have a wide coverage of the country, with the eastern part being covered by Ras Hotels, the western by Ethiopia Hotels, and the southern parts by the Wabe Shebelle Hotels chain.

There are 87 licensed and qualified tour operators in Ethiopia that cater to the over 200,000 tourists that come to the country annually.

The Ethiopian tourism sector played host to 227,398 tourists in 2005 and earned about 1.2 billion Br. In the same year, the sector made a 16.6pc contribution to exports, amounting to 134.5 million Br.

According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), there were about 691 million tourists that were registered all over the world in 2003. Africa's share was 30.8 million, 4.5pc of the total.