Everything you need to know before we begin

HotelCompass is Africa's first AI-powered hospitality advisory and capital-matching platform. We bring institutional-grade hotel feasibility studies, financial modelling, brand-selection, and operator-matching tools to developers, owners, capital providers, and hotel schools across Africa and beyond. The platform combines proprietary methodology with practitioner expertise — built by hospitality professionals, for hospitality professionals.

HotelCompass was founded by Caesar Waganagwa, a Swiss-trained hotelier with over 20 years of operational and development experience at Hilton, Marriott, Baur Au Lac (Zurich), Sarova Hotels, and the Tamarind Group. The platform reflects two decades of frontline hospitality work and was built specifically to address the gap between investment-grade analytical rigour and the realities of African hotel development.

Our operational headquarters is in Vipingo, Kilifi County, Kenya, with active engagements across East and Southern Africa. The platform serves clients globally — wherever hotel development meets the African continent.

Three things. First, we combine practitioner expertise with proprietary AI-augmented analytical tools — so we deliver the depth of a top-tier consulting firm at a fraction of the cost. Second, we operate as a marketplace as well as an advisor: our financier and operator network of 169 capital sources and 139 hotel operators is a transactional asset, not a directory. Third, we are vertically integrated into the African market — we understand local construction costs, regulatory environments, and operating realities at first-hand.

Africa's hospitality industry has not grown to its potential because of one structural problem — and it is not capital. It is trust. Sponsors cannot prove their projects are investment-ready; capital cannot tell which deals are real; operators cannot find pre-vetted pipeline. The continent's USD 60–80 billion hospitality opportunity is held back not by demand, not by capital availability, but by the absence of credible, neutral preparation work that meets institutional standards. HotelCompass exists to close that gap. The platform itself is geographically extensible to South-East Asia, Gulf, and Latin America, but Africa is where the trust deficit is most acute and where the impact is most needed first.

Engagement, deliverables, and client communication are conducted in English. Internal Swahili, French, and German are available where the engagement requires it — the founder is conversant in all three. We can produce final-form deliverables (executive summaries, investor decks) translated into French, Portuguese, or Arabic on request, typically through a vetted external translator at the client's cost.

The platform operates as a small-team consultancy with founder-led senior engagement and supporting analyst capacity. Esther Waganagwa serves as Operations Director and is the primary point of contact for engagement administration, scheduling, and invoicing. For active engagements, every deliverable is reviewed by at least two team members before issue. If the founder is unavailable for an extended period, active engagements continue under the lead analyst with founder review on critical decisions. New engagements during such periods are scheduled to begin once normal capacity resumes.

HotelCompass™ is the registered trademark for the platform under Chuchi Enterprise Ltd. The compass symbol is deliberate: it represents the act of orienting a hospitality decision relative to true north — finding the credible, defensible bearing in a market full of partial information and competing claims. Every advisory report, every match, every site validation we issue is meant to give the client a fixed bearing they can navigate by. The wordmark, monogram, and wax seal that appear on our deliverables all draw from this same nautical-instrument grammar.

We offer nine core advisory services that span the full hotel project lifecycle: (1) Feasibility Studies, (2) Financial Modelling (USALI 12th Edition compliant), (3) Value Engineering, (4) Brand & Operator Selection, (5) Standard Operating Procedures, (6) Staffing Guides, (7) Hotel Valuation, (8) Market Intelligence, and (9) ESG & Sustainability. You can browse all services on the Services page.

It's a seven-stage flow designed to remove ambiguity and protect both sides. (1) You browse services and click "Request a Quote." (2) You complete a brief scoping form — project type, location, key count, deliverables required. (3) We review the scope and send you a written quote, typically within two business days. (4) You accept the quote — by clicking through and digitally acknowledging — which locks the price and timeline. (5) You pay a deposit (usually 50%) via PayPal, Pesapal, Paystack, or bank transfer. (6) You complete a structured intake form with project specifics, after which we begin the work. (7) We deliver the report; you pay the balance; the engagement closes.

Pricing varies by service complexity. Indicative starting prices: Market Intelligence from USD 2,200, Staffing Guide from USD 2,400, Financial Modelling from USD 3,200, SOPs from USD 3,800, Feasibility Study from USD 4,500, ESG Scorecard from USD 4,800, Value Engineering from USD 5,800, Hotel Valuation from USD 6,500, Brand & Operator Selection from USD 8,500. The actual quoted price is calibrated to project size, market complexity, and turnaround urgency. Detailed pricing is available; quotes are issued in writing after scoping.

Standard turnaround times: Market Intelligence 1-2 weeks, Staffing Guide 2 weeks, Financial Modelling 2-3 weeks, SOPs 3-4 weeks, Feasibility Study 4-6 weeks, ESG Scorecard 3 weeks, Value Engineering 3-4 weeks, Hotel Valuation 3 weeks, Brand & Operator Selection 4-8 weeks. Rush delivery is available with a surcharge — quoted at acceptance stage.

Reports are delivered as professionally typeset PDFs with the HotelCompass letterhead. Financial models are provided as Excel workbooks (USALI-compliant). Where applicable, we provide editable Word versions for documents you may want to incorporate into your own materials. All deliverables are downloadable from your client portal and remain available indefinitely.

Yes. Each engagement includes one round of revisions at no additional cost, to be requested within 14 days of delivery. Additional rounds are quoted as small change orders at our standard hourly rate. Revisions cover refinement of analysis, clarification of findings, or incorporation of new information that has emerged — they do not cover scope expansion (which is treated as a new engagement).

Yes, by default. All client engagements are confidential; project information is held in encrypted storage and accessed only by personnel directly assigned to your engagement. We are happy to sign your NDA, or you can sign ours at engagement letter stage. We never publish, share, or use client project information for any purpose other than the engagement itself.

Senior judgement, methodology, sign-off, and client interaction are all human. The founder reviews every report before issue. AI handles the high-volume mechanical work — parsing comparable-set data, drafting standardised sections, generating first-pass financial schedules, transcribing meetings, surfacing relevant precedents from our knowledge base. The combination is what allows us to deliver institutional-grade depth at a fraction of legacy-consulting cost. No deliverable goes to a client without a senior human review and signature.

Three layers. First, every AI-generated section in a draft report is reviewed line-by-line by a senior human against the source data. Second, key numerical outputs (IRR, NPV, valuation ranges, cost benchmarks) are cross-checked using a second independent calculation route — typically a separate spreadsheet model or a manual triangulation. Third, every deliverable is read by a second team member before issue. Errors that nonetheless reach a client are corrected free of charge as part of our one-revision-included policy, and we will reissue the deliverable with the same reference number marked as a corrected version.

Active engagements primarily across East and Southern Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa. We have also delivered work in Mauritius, Seychelles, Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt and Morocco. New geographies are added on a project-by-project basis once we have either an in-country partner or a senior team member who can be on the ground for site work. If your project is in a country we have not listed, please ask — we may have capacity, or be able to mobilise it for the right engagement.

Yes, with caveats. Compressed timelines for feasibility studies, valuations, and BOQs are possible — typically delivering at 50-60% of the standard lead time — but they require (a) all source data ready on day one, (b) a 30% expedite premium on the standard fee, and (c) calendar availability on our side, which we cannot always guarantee in any given week. Site Validation missions can sometimes deploy within 7 days for urgent transactions; talk to us before you book travel. We will never compromise the depth of work to hit a tighter deadline — we will either accept the schedule and deliver to standard, or decline and explain why.

Every advisory report we issue carries a unique reference number printed on the cover and beneath the wax seal. Anyone — your bank, your investor, your operator, your lawyer — can verify the report's authenticity at hotelcompass.app/verify.php by entering that reference. The verification page confirms the report's issue date, intended recipient, and document type. This applies to feasibility studies, valuations, Site Validation reports, and academic certificates equally — the same authentication infrastructure for every sealed deliverable.

You submit a match request describing your project — location, segment, key count, total capex, capital sought, operator preferences. Our matching algorithm ranks our network of 169 financiers and 139 operators against your requirements using a multi-factor score (geographic mandate fit, instrument fit, ticket size fit, sector preference, hospitality experience, ESG alignment). After review, you receive a blinded shortlist showing scored matches without identifying the institutions. To proceed, you sign an engagement letter and pay an engagement fee — at which point the identities are revealed and warm introductions are made.

169 capital sources (banks, DFIs, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, hospitality-focused private equity, mezzanine providers, impact investors) and 139 hotel operators (international chains, regional chains, independent boutique brands, branded residence operators, soft brands). The network is curated, not just listed — every counterparty has known mandates, ticket sizes, and segment preferences. We refresh the network quarterly to remove inactive participants and add new ones.

For capital matching we use the modified Lehman Scale — a tiered success-fee structure widely used in investment banking: 5% on the first USD 5M raised, 4% on the next USD 5M, 3% on the next USD 5M, 2% on the next USD 5M, 1% on amounts above USD 20M. There is also a flat engagement fee at the start (typically USD 25,000 to USD 50,000 depending on deal size) which is credited against the success fee at close. For operator matching, fees are structured as a percentage of the hotel's first-year base management fee, payable at HMA signing.

The success fee is exactly that — only payable on a successful close. The engagement fee covers our work in preparing your project for institutional review (information memorandum, financial model formatting, market positioning, response preparation) and is not refundable if no transaction occurs. If introductions are made but no deal closes within 18 months of engagement, the engagement letter expires and any related obligations end.

Match results are blinded by default — institutional names are not revealed until both sides have signed mutual NDAs and confirmed interest. We maintain separate "data room" environments for each engaged transaction, with access logs and time-limited credentials. Sponsor identity, project address, and financial details are never shared without explicit sponsor consent.

We are paid by one side per transaction — typically the sponsor — and we declare that to the counterparty before any introduction. We do not take fees from both sides of the same deal. Where we hold an existing advisory relationship that creates an actual or perceived conflict, we either decline the new engagement or disclose it in writing and accept the engagement only with both parties' written acknowledgement. The same standards we expect investment banks to operate to, we operate to ourselves.

Yes. Every project that goes to our capital marketplace is scored against a published ESG screen covering environmental impact (water, energy, biodiversity), social impact (local employment, community engagement, indigenous-rights compliance), and governance (sponsor track record, structural integrity, regulatory standing). DFI capital especially demands this screen at the introduction stage — projects that fail key ESG criteria do not reach our institutional capital network. The screen is not a substitute for full ESG due diligence, but it is a defensible first filter.

A free programme for hotel schools and hospitality education programmes. Twenty self-paced tutorials across two tracks (Foundation and Advanced) plus three real anonymised case studies, lecturer grading rubrics, and verified Certificates of Completion. The intent is to close the gap between what hospitality programmes teach and what the industry actually needs — investment-grade fluency in feasibility, financial modelling, valuation, brand selection, operator agreements, and capital structuring.

This is an important question and we want to be straightforward. HotelCompass is not currently a chartered or government-accredited educational institution. Our certificates are industry certificates of completion — verified, hand-signed by the founder (a Swiss-trained hotelier with 20+ years of operational and development experience), traceable to a unique HC-CERT reference number, and issued under a documented curriculum and grading rubric. They certify that the holder has successfully completed our programme; they are not a substitute for a university degree, an MRICS qualification, or a STR CHIA certificate.

What our certificates ARE useful for: signalling to employers that you have practical hospitality investment fluency, serving as evidence of CPD, and complementing a formal qualification. We work transparently with hotel schools who use our materials as supplementary curriculum — the school issues its own academic credit; we supplement with the practitioner certificate. We are exploring formal accreditation pathways with industry bodies (HVS Academy, RICS, EHL) and will publish updates as those discussions progress.

Faculty members at recognised hospitality programmes can request institutional access. We verify the institution by checking accreditation status with national education ministries or accrediting bodies (e.g. EQUIS, AACSB, Conseil Suisse pour l'Accréditation, university charters). Once verified, the institution gets free access for all enrolled students and lecturers — covering the full curriculum, grading tools, and certificate issuance.

Tutorials use auto-graded assignments with rubric-based feedback. Case studies require written analysis submitted through the platform; these are graded by either the institution's assigned lecturer (where partner schools are involved) or by HotelCompass-approved graders for individual learners. Each case study has a published rubric covering analytical structure, factual accuracy, commercial judgement, and presentation quality.

Issuance and verification of a Certificate of Completion carries a one-off administrative fee, currently USD 49 per certificate, which covers grading review, hand-signing, sealing, and lifelong verification on our platform. Students at partner institutions where the school covers programme costs do not pay individually. Certificates are a separate transaction from the curriculum (which is free for accredited institutions).

Every certificate carries a unique HC-CERT reference number. Anyone can verify the certificate at hotelcompass.app/verify by entering the reference number — this returns the holder's name, completion date, and programme. We never disclose grades or other personal information without the holder's consent.

The Practice Playground is a sandbox environment offering students and faculty at partnered hotel schools free access to working versions of the platform's professional tools — feasibility studies, USALI P&L modelling, sensitivity analysis, BOQ benchmarking, brand-standard comparison, hotel valuation — running against synthetic data. Students get credentialed individual logins; faculty get read-only access to live tools for in-class demonstration. Students who later become professional clients arrive with operational fluency; that's the point. Hotel schools inquire via our academic partnership archetype.

PayPal (international cards and PayPal balance), Pesapal (M-Pesa, Airtel Money, Visa, Mastercard for African clients), Paystack (cards and bank transfer for Nigerian/Ghanaian clients), and direct bank transfer (USD or KES). All online payments are processed through PCI-DSS compliant gateways — we never see or store your card details directly.

Services are listed in USD. Your portal allows you to view prices in any of 30+ currencies for budgeting purposes — but the contract amount is always denominated in USD and converted at the time of payment using the gateway's exchange rate (typically mid-market plus the gateway's spread).

Yes. Standard advisory engagements use a 50% deposit at acceptance, 50% at delivery. Larger engagements (above USD 20,000) can be structured into three payments. Match-making engagement fees are paid in full at the start; success fees are paid at deal close from the proceeds of the transaction.

Deposits paid before work commences are refundable in full minus a 5% processing fee. Once work has started, refunds are pro-rated against work performed: if we have completed 30% of the work, we retain 30% of the fee plus the 5% processing fee. After delivery, the engagement is final — but the standard one round of revisions ensures any concerns about the work are addressed at no further cost. Match-making engagement fees are not refundable as they cover preparation work performed regardless of outcome.

M-Pesa confirmations sometimes take 1-3 minutes to flow back through Pesapal to our system. If your order still shows as unpaid after 5 minutes, please contact us with your M-Pesa transaction reference (the 10-character code starting with a letter) and we will reconcile manually within one business hour. Webhook reconciliation runs every 5 minutes for missed callbacks.

Quoted fees are exclusive of VAT. For Kenyan clients, 16% VAT is applied at invoice stage where applicable. For non-Kenyan clients, the supply is treated as an export of services per Kenyan tax rules — typically zero-rated, though we will issue the appropriate documentation for your jurisdiction. Withholding tax obligations vary by country; we provide a withholding-tax certificate where requested. If your jurisdiction requires reverse-charge VAT registration on professional services, your tax advisor should confirm the local treatment before payment.

USD is the default invoicing currency for international hospitality transactions across Africa — capital partners are largely USD-based, brand operators use USD-denominated HMA terms, and our cost base for AI infrastructure is USD-incurred. Pricing in USD avoids the situation where a local-currency quote becomes meaningfully different in real terms over the engagement window. Kenyan clients can pay in KES at the prevailing CBK rate at invoice issue date, locked for 14 days. Other African clients can pay in their local currency through Pesapal; the conversion rate is set at point of payment.

All data in transit is encrypted via TLS 1.3 (HTTPS only). Database connections are encrypted. Access to project data is role-based — only personnel directly assigned to your engagement can view your information. We do not sell, share, or use your data for advertising or marketing. Documents you upload are stored in a directory blocked from direct web access (`.htaccess Deny from all`); they can only be accessed through authenticated portal sessions.

Our application is hosted on a managed cPanel/LiteSpeed environment with daily encrypted backups. Database backups are retained for 30 days. We can sign a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) and provide infrastructure documentation to clients with specific compliance requirements (e.g. EU clients under GDPR).

We never store card numbers directly — payments are tokenised by PayPal, Pesapal, or Paystack. Webhook events are verified against gateway signatures. All payment events are logged in an audit trail. Our admin console requires multi-factor verification for any payment-related operations.

No. Client project data is never used to train any AI model. The AI tools in our platform (used for natural-language search, document drafting, and meeting transcription) operate on each engagement's data only within that engagement. Our agreements with AI providers (Anthropic) prohibit the provider from using prompts or completions for training.

In the unlikely event of a security incident affecting your data, we will notify you within 72 hours of discovery (consistent with GDPR notification timelines), describe the nature and scope of the incident, the data affected, the steps we are taking, and the steps you should take.

The fastest route is the Contact form on this site, which routes directly to the relevant team. For active engagements, your client portal has a built-in correspondence tab where messages are tracked alongside your project. For urgent matters, our office number is +254 722 709 800 / +254 738 709 800 (East Africa Time, GMT+3) or email support@hotelcompass.app.

New enquiries: same business day. Active engagement queries: within 4 working hours. Quote requests: within 2 business days. Match-making submissions: initial review within 5 business days. We are closed weekends and Kenyan public holidays; messages received outside business hours are addressed first thing the following business day.

Email support@hotelcompass.app directly. We take complaints seriously and aim to resolve them within 5 business days. Where a resolution cannot be reached internally, we are happy to engage a mutually-agreed independent mediator.

Yes, subject to our refund policy described above. Cancellations are processed promptly; we don't lock you in. We do ask for a cancellation reason — not as a barrier, but because it helps us improve.

We operate on East Africa Time (EAT, UTC+3). Working hours are typically 08:00–18:00 EAT, Monday to Friday. We answer emails outside those hours during active engagements. For client meetings, we are flexible to accommodate European, Middle East, and Asian timezones — North American clients should expect early-morning EAT scheduling (which is late-evening US Eastern). Sundays are reserved for personal time except in genuine engagement emergencies.

Yes — The Monthly Bearing, a once-monthly briefing covering African hospitality investment activity, deal-flow indicators, and platform updates. To subscribe, register a free account at hotelcompass.app and tick the newsletter preference, or email us at support@hotelcompass.app asking to be added. Each issue carries an unsubscribe link. We do not sell or share newsletter recipient lists.

Site Validation is an independent, on-the-ground evidence-gathering service for hotel transactions. Where a feasibility study or valuation is paper-based analysis, a Site Validation puts a HotelCompass team physically at the property to verify what is actually there — structural condition, operational competence, brand-standard compliance, financial-records integrity, and any other dimension of a transaction that needs verified evidence rather than represented evidence. The output is a signed and sealed report your investor, lender, brand or counterparty can rely on. Service overview →

Twelve discrete validation streams cover the lifecycle of a hospitality transaction: Acquisition DD, Structural-Phase DD, Operator-Competence DD, Financial-Records Integrity, Brand-Standard Compliance, Pre-Opening Assurance, Owner's Representative Visit, Lender-Monitoring Visit, Insurance Loss Verification, Sustainability/ESG Verification, IPO/Disposition Readiness, and Operator-Change Handover. Each unlocks one specific stakeholder decision — financial close, drawdown, IC approval, HMA signing, etc. You commission one stream, paired streams, all four core streams (Full Transaction DD), or retain us on an ongoing basis. See all twelve streams →

A typical engagement runs 4–8 weeks from brief to final report: 1–2 weeks for the introduction letter and access pack, 3–7 days on-site (longer for paired or full DD), then 5–10 business days from end-of-mission to draft report, plus a brief client comments window before the final sealed report is issued. Urgent transactions can be deployed within 7 days; talk to us before booking travel. The 60-minute findings clinic that closes every engagement is scheduled within a week of final-report issue.

The party commissioning the validation pays — typically the buyer, lender, investor, or operator who needs the independent evidence. Counterparties are not paying for our work and have no influence over our findings. Single-stream engagements start at USD 5,500; Paired Streams (typical for two-sided validations) carry a 15% bundle discount; Full Transaction DD (four integrated streams) is a USD 64,000 flat fee; Retained relationships start at USD 18,000 per year for quarterly visits under an agreed protocol. Travel is billed at cost.

Yes. Every final report carries an HC-VAL reference number printed on the cover and beneath the wax seal. The counterparty — bank, investor, brand, regulator — can verify the report at hotelcompass.app/verify.php using that reference. The verification confirms issue date, intended recipient, document type, and the engagement's lead stream. If you receive a Site Validation report and the reference does not verify, it is not authentic — contact us immediately.

Seven archetypes, each with a clearly defined mutual benefit: Capital (DFIs, PE, sovereign LPs receive vetted deal flow), Operator (hotel brands receive operator-ready pipeline), Vendor (architects, QSs, MEP, interiors get directory listings), Agent (brokers subscribe at preferred rates and pass speed advantages to their clients), Academic (hotel schools get free Practice Playground access), Sponsor (developers get the full capital + operator + brand stack assembled under one engagement), and Acquirer (strategic conversation under mutual NDA). See all archetypes →

Hospitality agents and brokers subscribe to HotelCompass at deeply discounted rates and use our feasibility, valuation, BOQ and capital-introduction tools to deliver work to their own clients in days rather than months. You keep your full pricing schedule with your clients — we don't see your commercials. Volume discounts apply for agencies running multiple active hospitality clients. The model is a SaaS-tier subscription, not a commission split. Discuss the agent tier →

Free institutional access to our Practice Playground sandbox for all enrolled students, faculty read-only access to live tools for in-class demonstration, course-aligned materials (sample reports, BOQ templates, brand-standard frameworks), 1–2 guest lectures per academic year, and a recruitment pathway for top-performing students into HotelCompass and our advisory network. No fee, no exclusivity, no commitment — perpetual. We ask for a partner-school listing on our public site and a faculty point-of-contact in return. Discuss an academic partnership →

Yes, under mutual NDA, exploratory only. The platform is operational, revenue-generating, IP-owned outright by Chuchi Enterprise Ltd with no outside investors, and structurally extensible beyond Africa. We are open to full acquisition, strategic investment, and white-label/regional joint-venture structures. Initial conversations are confidential and signed under your standard NDA in advance. Open a confidential conversation →

The seven archetypes cover the bulk of what we do, but the African hospitality industry has many value-creation patterns we are open to exploring — white-label HotelCompass for your region, joint venture for a specific market, co-investment in a strategic asset. Email caesar@hotelcompass.app directly with what you have in mind, or use the general partnership enquiry form.