Maputo — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Wednesday inaugurated a new hotel in the western city of Tete, which may go some way towards meeting the increasing demand for accommodation in the city.

The Tete Park Inn Hotel represents an investment of 25 million dollars by CR Holdings, part of the Belgium-based Carlson Rezidor group.

The hotel has 117 rooms, including a presidential suite, a restaurant and bar, a swimming pool, and a conference area that can be divided into three rooms, each covering 50 square metres. It employs 90 workers, mostly natives of Tete

The hotel is three kilometres from Tete international airport, and five kilometres from the centre of the city.

At the ceremony, Guebuza said that Tete was now an example of how the exploitation of natural resources “has a direct catalyzing impact on other sectors of the country’s social and economic life”. The hotel, he added, was built on an area that previously had nothing but shrubs and a few grazing goats.

Guebuza said the government is encouraging tourism through the construction and rehabilitation of hotels, the training of staff, and incentives for private business. These include tax breaks for companies investing in tourism.

The expansion in the country’s tourism capacity could be seen in the large number of new hotels that have opened in recent years. Guebuza said this had led to an increase in hotel rooms from 15,740 in 2006 to 38,460 in 2011.

For his part, a spokesperson for the Carlson Rezidor group, Amiro Raugy, said that, in addition to major real estate undertakings, CR Holdings intends to build the first major shopping mall in the region, the Tete Shopping Centre, alongside the Tete Park Inn.