Egyptian hotel tycoon Kamel Abou Aly secures $250 million to expand in Morocco

Egyptian hotel tycoon Kamel Abou Aly has secured $250 million in loans to expand his Pickalbatros Hotels & Resorts group in Morocco, where he is buying city hotels and upgrading resorts ahead of the 2030 FIFA World Cup.

The financing comes from the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group's private-sector lender, and Attijariwafa Bank, Morocco's largest bank. Abou Aly, the group's founder and chairman, signed the agreement in Marrakech on Thursday with David Tinel, the IFC's head for Morocco, and Mohamed Redouane El Alj, an executive director of the Attijariwafa Bank group.

Zilla Capital, the investment bank that advised Pickalbatros, called it the largest hotel financing the IFC has backed in Morocco to date. The package, worth about 2.46 billion dirhams, is split into three tranches in two currencies, and part of it is tied to environmental performance targets. The lenders did not disclose the size of each tranche, the interest rate or the maturities.

Two Casablanca hotels

The first money will go to two hotels Pickalbatros bought this year in Casablanca, Morocco's commercial capital, and to renovating them. The group acquired the five-star Sofitel Casablanca Tour Blanche from Moroccan hotel owner Risma for about 450 million dirhams, or about $46 million, and followed it with the 184-room Mövenpick Hotel Casablanca. The Sofitel caters largely to business travelers, a new market for a group built on beach and leisure resorts.

The rest of the financing will pay for energy- and water-saving upgrades at the group's hotels in Marrakech and Agadir, which are seeking EDGE green-building certification, and will refinance existing debt over longer periods. The IFC will also help the company set up a separate holding structure for its Moroccan business.

The loan forms the largest part of a $350 million investment plan for Morocco that Pickalbatros has laid out for 2026 to 2029.

"Competition creates quality," Abou Aly said at the signing, speaking in French. He called the deal an important step for both the group and Moroccan tourism and described the IFC as a long-term financial partner. He also said he hoped the group would one day open in the southern Atlantic city of Dakhla.

Tinel said tourism is a priority sector for the IFC, particularly in the run-up to the World Cup, which Morocco will co-host with Spain and Portugal. He estimated the investment would support about 7,500 direct and indirect jobs.

Abdelaziz El Kahwane, Pickalbatros's vice president for Morocco, said more deals are coming. "This agreement will be neither the first nor the last," he said.

Fast growth in Morocco

Pickalbatros now has nine hotels with more than 2,700 rooms in Morocco, after adding more than 1,400 rooms in two years. It aims to reach about 7,000 rooms in the country by 2030.

Much of that growth came in 2024, when the group bought the 349-room Club Sangho, the 640-room Palmeraie Palace and Golf Hotel complex in Marrakech and the 410-room Palais des Roses in Agadir. It reopened Palais des Roses in May 2025 and opened the SunGo Club hotel in Marrakech in September 2025. It also runs the White Beach resort in Taghazout, a surf town north of Agadir. In December 2025, its Moroccan subsidiary took a 50% stake in Sindipark, the operator of Casablanca's Sindibad theme park.

Morocco drew a record 19.8 million tourists in 2025 and is targeting 26 million a year by 2030.

From Hurghada to Casablanca

Abou Aly was born in 1954 in Port Said, at the northern end of Egypt's Suez Canal. He spent 15 years working in Switzerland before returning to Egypt in 1992 to start his own hotel brand, beginning with the Beach Albatros Resort in Hurghada on the Red Sea.

He built Pickalbatros into one of Egypt's largest resort operators, with all-inclusive properties in Hurghada, Sharm El Sheikh and Marsa Alam. The group had 45 properties with more than 20,000 rooms across Egypt and Morocco as of September.

The group's plans for the end of this year include opening the Palmeraie Golf Palace in Marrakech, the Pickalbatros Royal Paradise in Sharm El Sheikh and the Pickalbatros Cairo Hotel & Spa, the former Le Méridien Heliopolis.