Through the vision of founder, Swiss-born Hans Enderle, and the financial backing of the Mine Pension Funds, the opening of City Lodge Randburg (now called City Lodge Hotel Bryanston) on 1 August 1985, became the catalyst for what today is South Africa's leading selected services hotel chain.
From the start, emphasis was placed on quality accommodation, homely ambience and friendly service - and these are still hallmarks of the group today. After pioneering the quality, selected services hotel concept in South Africa, the group was incorporated in July 1986 and has since substantially grown and diversified its product offering to meet different travellers' needs.
In 1990, the second-tier Town Lodge concept was started and has proved highly popular. On 18 November 1992, the group successfully listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
Then in 1995, the group acquired a 50% interest in the companies associated with the upmarket Courtyard Suite Hotel chain and also opened its first Road Lodge, a concept aimed mainly at budget conscious travellers. In 2015, the outstanding 50% in the Courtyard Joint Venture was acquired from HPF Properties Pty Ltd.
On the occasion of the group's 10th anniversary on 1 August 1995, the City Lodge 10th Anniversary Employees Share Trust was launched which enabled all employees to become shareholders.
In 2013, the group acquired a 50% interest in two hotels in Nairobi, Kenya, and subsequently took full ownership of the Fairview Hotel and Town Lodge, Upper Hill, Nairobi. Town Lodge Gaborone in Botswana became the first new hotel developed by the group outside of South Africa. This development was followed by the Town Lodge Windhoek, Namibia, in 2017, the City Lodge Hotel at Two Rivers Mall, in Nairobi, Kenya, in early 2018, the City Lodge Hotel Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania, in late 2018 and the City Lodge Hotel Maputo, in Mozambique, in early 2020. The three hotels in Kenya and the one hotel in Tanzania were sold and handed over to new owners on 1 July 2022.
With 5 Courtyard Hotels (480 rooms), 19 City Lodge Hotels (3281 rooms), 12 Town Lodges (1507 rooms) and 23 Road Lodges (2 272 rooms), the City Lodge Hotel Group has 7540 rooms and ranks amongst the 250 largest hotel chains in the world.
Commitment to service excellence from a highly motivated and dedicated staff is a common thread throughout the group's hotels, which have developed a loyal clientele of both business and leisure travellers over more than three decades.
Company Vision
We will be recognised as the preferred sub-Saharan African hotel group. Through dedicated leadership, teamwork and kindness, we will demonstrate our consistent commitment to delivering caring service with style and grace. We will constantly enhance our guests' experience through our passionate people, ongoing innovation and leading-edge technology. Our integrity, values and ongoing investment in our people and hotels will provide exceptional returns to stakeholders and ensure continued, sustainable growth. Through acts of kindness we will make a positive difference to our guests, our colleagues, our communities and our environment.
Company Credo
Our credo represents the character of City Lodge Hotels. It represents the collective qualities, mental and moral, that distinguish us in our marketplace. Whilst our hotels are constructed with bricks and mortar, it is our people, and the relationships that they build with other people, that provide the real strength that allows us to grow and prosper.
We care for our country, for the property of our Guests, for our company, and for our environment, with which we have been entrusted by future generations.
But above all, we care for people!
To care for people means that we are emotionally connected, that we feel concern and that we are sincerely interested in people’s well being and success.
We care for our Guests, for one another and for the communities in which we live.
We care about being hospitable, about the safety and well being of our Guests whom we warmly welcome into our ‘homes from home’.
We care for our employees, whose work we value, respect and recognise for its worth and contribution.
We care for our families and especially for our children who will represent us in the way they live out their future.
We care for our shareholders, for the hard earned money that they invest in our company and for the trust that they have placed in us to grow their money wisely.
We care for and respect our suppliers whom we trust to provide us with goods and services of the highest quality.
Caring comes from the heart - that’s why we are passionate about what we do. That’s why we are also passionate about serving.
We Serve
As leaders, we serve our people. We strive to understand, to empathise and to support, to develop our people to be the very best they possibly can be.
Through caring and through serving we build successful communities. Communities of Guests who return again and again. Successful communities in which we live and to whom we contribute our time, energy and our skills. A hospitality industry community in which we actively participate, in which our voice is heard and whose standards and skills we constantly seek to advance.
We are ordinary people. Every day we accomplish extra-ordinary things, as "People Caring for People.”
In this we will not fail. We care too much