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The Catering
and Tourism Training Institute (CTTI) selected Gedion Demeke
Consulting Architect (GDCA), a private engineering firm, to turn the
bedrooms at Guenet Hotel into classrooms.
Local
consultants were invited by the Institute to provide detailed
preconstruction study of architectural, electrical and sanitary
design in order to help the Institute turn the 100 bedrooms in Genet
Hotel, its future location, into a language laboratory, lecture
rooms, a library, and offices. The study is expected to be completed
at the end of this month.
The federal
government decided in 1997 to use Guenet Hotel, located on
Dejazimach Beyene Merid Street, in the Kera area, to be the training
centre for its capacity building effort in the hospitality industry.
The existing facility of the Institute, on Ras Mekonnen Avenue, near
Mexico Square, is too small to train as many students as the growing
industry demands.
Part of the
plan includes the construction of an 18 million Br four-star hotel
on the 1,700sqm plot inside the hotel that can be used by the school
to provide internships to students trained by the Institute, which
took over the Hotel in November 1998. Reconstructing the facility
for training purposes and installing the equipment necessary is
projected to cost seven million Birr.
Neway Zera
Yohannes, general manager of the Institute, told Fortune that
the new four-star hotel will have a skeleton full-time staff; the
remaining workers will be trainees. The Institute has 250 students
instructed by 28 teachers for both the regular and extension
programmes. Since its establishment in 1969, it has trained more
than 5,000 people.
Once
reconstructed, the Guenet Hotel facility will have 20 bedrooms so
that trainees on duty can spend the night, Neway disclosed.
The Institute
floated a tender for the reconstruction design in May 2006 and five
companies showed interest: including Gedion Demeke Consultant (GDCA),
EDIT Architectural and Engineering Consultant and Light Stream
Consulting Architects and Engineers. All companies passed the
technical evaluation conducted by engineers from the Cultural
Heritage and Protection Authority.
GDCA,
established six years ago by Gedion Demeke, won the bid by offering
75,000 Br.
Commanding a
total area of 27,000sqm plot, Guenet Hotel is thought to have opened
in the late 1930s, during the Italian occupation. It has remained a
state property since the departure of the Italians in 1942.
The hotel
currently has 116 employees.
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