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Filipino billionaire Tony Tan Caktiong's Hotel101 is entering Africa with a planned 750-room hotel near the Giza pyramids in Egypt, a project expected to cost about 5.47 billion Egyptian pounds ($102 million).
Hotel101 Global Holdings Corp., the Nasdaq-listed hotel arm of Philippine property developer DoubleDragon Corp., said it had signed binding agreements with WNTR Property & Hospitality, an affiliate of Egyptian conglomerate IGI Holding, to develop Hotel101 properties across Egypt. Tan Caktiong, the founder of fast-food chain Jollibee Foods Corp., co-founded DoubleDragon with entrepreneur Edgar Sia II and serves as its co-chairman.
The first project, Hotel101-Cairo West, will rise on a 15,984-square-meter site on Ahmed Zewail Road in 6th of October City, about 10 minutes from the pyramids and the Grand Egyptian Museum. With about 750 rooms, it would rank among the three largest hotels in greater Cairo by room count. Completion is expected in 2029, subject to government, regulatory and corporate approvals.
The four-star hotel will have restaurants, swimming pools, a gym, a ballroom and conference space, aimed at both tourists and business travelers.
"Hotel101 becomes the first major homegrown Filipino brand and business model to be exported to Egypt," the company said.
A Filipino hotel model goes global
Hotel101 sells its rooms to individual investors, who own the units while the company rents them out to guests and runs the hotel. Every room is built to the same design and size, about 26 square meters, which the company says lets it standardize construction and operations across countries. Its stated goal is one million rooms in 100 countries, mostly through licensing deals with local partners like the one in Egypt.
The brand began in Manila in 2016. Hotel101 listed on the Nasdaq in June 2025 under the ticker HBNB, becoming the first Filipino-owned company to list on the New York exchange. It opened a hotel in Madrid in March and plans to open a 482-room property in Niseko, Japan, in December. Projects are also planned in Los Angeles and Milan.
The Egypt partner, IGI Holding, is controlled by the Sheta family, which has been in business since 1942. Egypt drew more than 19 million visitors in 2025 and has a population of about 118 million.
From a Manila ice cream parlor
Tan Caktiong, 73, opened an ice cream parlor in Manila in 1975 with his family and turned it into Jollibee, which became the Philippines' biggest restaurant company. The group now runs thousands of outlets worldwide under brands including Jollibee, Chowking, Red Ribbon and Smashburger, and it bought a majority stake in coffee chain The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in 2019.
He and his family are worth about $2 billion, ranking 12th on the 2026 list of the Philippines' richest people.
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