Spain’s Barceló Group studies investment opportunities in Mozambique

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Spain’s Barceló Group studies investment opportunities in Mozambique

2:33 CAT | 02 Jul 2025

Photo: Presidency of the Republic of Mozambique

The Spanish tourism group Barceló, one of the 30 largest in the world, is considering opening a hotel in Mozambique and offering flights from Madrid and Lisbon to Maputo, said the company’s leader after meeting with the Mozambican president.

“The first thing is certainly to go to the country and get to know it. We are a hotel company that works not only with holiday hotels, but also with urban hotels. We like to be able to offer our customers a combination of city experiences and beach destinations. So, the first objective would be to have a hotel in the capital and have a project to develop on a beach in the Indian Ocean,” explained the group’s co-president, Simón Pedro Barceló, after a meeting in Seville with the Mozambican president, Daniel Chapo.

“That would be of the utmost interest. And if we generate demand from Spain and Portugal, we will obviously fly directly from Madrid or Lisbon to Maputo to connect Spain to the destination,” he said after meeting President Chapo, who is in Seville for the 4th UN Conference on Financing for Development.

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Barceló is one of the 30 largest tourism and hotel groups in the world and the second largest in Spain, operating more than 300 hotels, with 60,000 rooms in 28 countries, in addition to 700 travel agencies in four countries and a domestic airline. Barcelo invoiced almost €4.275 billion in 2023.

According to Simón Pedro Barceló, the meeting with President Chapo made it possible to “understand a little of the president’s vision in relation to tourism” in Mozambique: “And I was able to convey to the president our interest as a growing tourism company in valuing and getting to know Mozambique in greater depth and, naturally, in valuing our presence in the country.”

He recalled that the group operates in “two major areas of activity”, hotels and travel agencies, as a tour operator and airline, and is therefore “always interested in finding new destinations” to develop its commercial presence, “new hotels, where we can incorporate existing hotels and also new destinations”, for “clients in Spain and Portugal”.

“Among them, we fly to Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, we have a project that we will start building in Zanzibar next year, we already have a presence in the Maldives, so the Indian Ocean is a destination of interest to us and we hope to be able to go to Mozambique soon and see first-hand the opportunities that the country offers”, he concluded.

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Mozambique’s revenue from foreign tourists exceeded 200 million euros in 2024, but the Government expects it to reach 360 million euros in 2029, with the sector’s contribution increasing to 6% of GDP.

“Attracting major international events, positioning the country as an attractive destination for business and event tourism and other investments”, and “fostering tourism marketing mechanisms, with a strong focus on the digital component” are some of the priorities defined for the sector in the government’s 2025-2029 Five-Year Programme (PQG).

This is the first PQG of the executive led by this president, a document that has since been approved by parliament and which indicates that the volume of revenue from international tourism in 2024 amounted to more than US$221.2 million (€203.9 million), with a target of US$391.9 million (€361.3 million) in 2029.

According to the government’s forecasts, tourism’s contribution to Mozambique’s gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to increase from 4.02% in 2024 to 6.0% in 2029, at the end of this PQG, with the number of workers in the sector increasing from 14,603 to 22,115 in the same period.

In 2021, the tourism sector was worth 2.46% of GDP, and two years later the number of arrivals to the country soared to more than 870,000, with 87% coming from the African continent and 6% from Europe, mostly Portugal, a development driven by the decision to exempt tourists from 29 countries from visas, as part of the government’s economic acceleration measures.

Source: Lusa