Best Western chooses Turkey as regional hub

Turkey has become the regional center of the American Best Western International hotel chain. The international company, which is engaged in many sectors ranging from foodstuffs to personal hygiene and telecommunications to transportation, announced Turkey as its regional center. Tourism is another industry for which Turkey was declared the regional center. Last year Turkey, which was visited by 36 million tourists last year, had $34.3 billion in tourism revenue.

Best Western, which is undergoing reorganization, announced on its official website that they will be building 13 more hotels with 800 rooms in the Middle East between now and 2016. The American company will be opening 10 hotels in Saudi Arabia, two in Qatar and one in Kuwait. With these new hotels, the business strategy of the company will be determined from its Istanbul Office. The assistant CEO of Best Western International, Suzi Yoder, said they currently have 18 hotels active in Turkey and with a growing tourism industry, the country will become the center where they will be managing their operations. "The common culture in the region was one of the factors that affected our decision," added Yoder. The Arizona-based Best Western International founded in 1946 has 4,195 hotels worldwide. Some 2,000 of these hotels are in North America while the hotel chain is active in 100 countries from New Zealand to England. Their hotels host more than 10 million customers a year and last year the group's turnover was more than $6 billion.