City Lodge has cut remuneration for CEO Andrew Widegger and chief financial officer Dhanisha Nathoo for the full year to June 2024 although the company’s total spend on employees for the same period grew by 12% to R553 million.
Remuneration for the period under review for Wideggerdeclined from R11.5 million in 2023 to R8.9m this year.
Nathoo has also taken a pay cut, with total remuneration falling from R4.7m in 2023 to R4.3m for the year ended June 2024.
The decline in remuneration for City Lodge’s top executives comes against the company’s total remuneration for employees strengthening to R553m.The company has also had to effect a salary raise for its employees with effect from August 2024.
Total spend on employee remuneration R553m up 12%. We were pleased to have been able to recommend, effective 1 August 2024, a general increase of 6.25% for all employees, excluding minimum wage earners who were settled at 7.0% and save for certain exceptions,” it said.
In the year to June 2024, City Lodge Hotels bumped up its revenues by 13% to R1.9bn, with headline earnings per share growing by 10% to 33.2 cents.
Widegger said the company had exhibited resilience to South Africa’s tough operating environment and headwinds that include water shortages through drilling boreholes, filtration and water storage installations. City Lodge Hotels has thus authorised capital commitments of R459.4m for the current 2025 financial year.
Most of this capital investment will go into “hotel modernisation and technology investments” across its portfolio. The hotelier is also pursuing expansion of its SA operations.
“We’re also pursuing expansion opportunities in high-growth areas in South Africa, further strengthening our footprint and delivering long-term value to our shareholders,” said Widegger.
He acknowledged though that South Africa has been marred by “a challenging macroeconomic environment, characterised by high inflation and subdued corporate travel”.
The company was nonetheless demonstrating “resilience by growing revenue by 13% and increasing occupancy” by two percentage points to 58% over the year to June 2024. Over the same period, City Lodge Hotels’ food and beverage revenues also notched up a notable 22% increase.
“We began the year (under review) with strong demand, with occupancy rates approximately eight percentage points ahead of the prior year in the first quarter. However, prolonged high inflation, rising interest rates, and continuous load-shedding, combined with political uncertainty ahead of the South African national elections, started to weigh heavily on corporate demand and consumer purchasing power,” said the City Lodge CEO.
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