KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban have handed over the management of the Kabul Serena Hotel to a German company, a week after assuming direct control of the property, according to the firm’s chief executive.
Aaron Azim, the chief executive of Cinderella International Group, told Agence France-Presse that his company has been managing the newly renamed Kabul Grand Hotel since Feb. 1, under a 10-year contract awarded through a Taliban-run bidding process.
Azim, an Afghan-German national, did not disclose the financial details of the agreement but said the deal was finalized following the expiration of the previous contract with the Serena Hotels group. The Serena chain, owned by the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, had operated the Kabul property for two decades.
Last week, the Serena group confirmed that management of the hotel had been transferred to the Taliban-controlled Hotel State Owned Corporation but did not provide further details.
Taliban officials, who seized power in 2021, said they had selected an international company with “sufficient experience in the field of hotel management” to take over operations, though they did not name the firm.
Azim said his company has been active in Afghanistan for 20 years, primarily in infrastructure projects such as road construction and the mining sector.
The Kabul Serena Hotel has been the target of multiple attacks over the years. In 2014, four gunmen managed to bypass security and killed nine people, including an Agence France-Presse journalist and members of his family. A 2008 suicide bombing, which killed six people, was blamed on Sirajuddin Haqqani, now the Taliban’s interior minister.
Taliban have not provided details on how the hotel’s management transition will affect its security or operations.
