1,200 More Hotel Rooms for Marsa Alam: Travco Buys 600,000 Square Metres for 69 Million Dollars
Travco has contracted to buy 600,000 square metres of land in Marsa Alam for more than 69 million dollars and plans three five-star hotels with up to 1,200 rooms on it, according to Al Arabiya Business and Bloom Gate. No start or opening date is given.
6 October 2026
Travco, the Egyptian tourism and hotel group, has contracted to buy 600,000 square metres of land in Marsa Alam for more than 69 million dollars, and plans to build three five-star hotels on it with a capacity of up to 1,200 rooms, according to Al Arabiya Business and the Egyptian business outlet Bloom Gate.
The three hotels would cost a further 120 to 150 million dollars to build, on top of the price of the land, Bloom Gate reported, citing sources. The plot is an extension of one of the group's existing projects in Marsa Alam, and Travco has begun the procedures to take possession of it from the General Authority for Tourism Development before construction starts, within the grace period agreed with the authority.
Travco already owns about 11 hotels in Marsa Alam, run by its hotel arm JAZ Hotel Group; the three new properties would take it to 14 in the area. Across Egypt the group holds some 25,000 hotel rooms — in the Red Sea, Sharm el-Sheikh, the North Coast, Greater Cairo, Luxor and Aswan — and it is also expanding in Zanzibar, where it owns two hotels with more than 400 rooms, and looking to acquire three hotels in Morocco.
The reports also put numbers on how the southern coast's season is running:
- Marsa Alam hotel occupancy of 80 to 85 percent from July to September this year, with European guests taking the largest share
- Travco's Egypt-wide occupancy averaging about 80 percent over the first nine months of 2026
- an expected 10 to 15 percent rise in occupancy in the final quarter against the same period last year
Diving and reef trips drive Marsa Alam's season, which peaks in winter, with arrivals rising from Italy, Germany and other European countries, according to Bloom Gate.
What the reports do not give: no construction start date, no opening date, no contractor, and no breakdown of how the 1,200 rooms would be split between the three hotels. The occupancy and investment figures are attributed to unnamed sources rather than to an official announcement by Travco or the authority.
For residents and visitors, the question behind a build-out this size is what has to be in place to serve it. Hurghada News reported last week that bids for a new 220 kV electricity substation at Marsa Alam were being opened — infrastructure of exactly the kind 1,200 extra rooms would depend on. Neither report connects the two.