Speaker

Marc Wachsberger

Chief Executive Officer
The Capital Hotels & Apartments

Marc Wachsberger is the CEO and founder of The Capital Hotels and Apartments, a South African group of hotel and apartment properties intent on disrupting the market with its alternative accommodation model. Marc founded the group in 2008 when he identified a gap in the market when hotels were extraordinarily expensive, but there was an excess of rental apartments on the market. In 2010 after the Soccer World Cup hangover, he began buying and developing hotels to form an uniquely positioned owner operator model that offers 4 and 5 star hotel, apartment and conference products. The local leisure and business travel markets welcomed the industry disruptor and the group has grown from strength to strength since then, and now includes hotels and apartments in Cape Town, Sandton, Rosebank, Melrose, Pretoria, Durban, and Mbombela. With more than 1600 rooms and employing more than 1,000 people, the company is now widely regarded as one of the largest providers of fully serviced luxury apartments and hotel rooms in South Africa. Marc’s entrepreneurial philosophy permeates every level of the business, with his creative responses to the COVID-19 pandemic ensuring that the group survived and thrived during the pandemic, protecting employees’ jobs and positioning the group for even greater growth at a time when most of the hospitality industry was closing their doors. Marc studied Finance at the University of the Witwatersrand, and qualified as a BCom (CFA), after which he went into corporate finance where he brokered mergers and acquisitions in the mining sector. Before starting The Capital Hotels and Apartments, he established his own private equity firm, Intamarket Equity and Advisory.