Why did the Sheraton sign disappear from Oran's cliffs?

So what happened?

A tower that never belonged to Sheraton

The Sheraton Oran Hotel & Towers stood on the Route des Falaises, in the Canastel area of Oran. Designed by the Italian firm Fabris & Partners, its main tower rose 19 floors above the cliffs.

Yet the building never belonged to Sheraton. It belonged to the Société de Développement Hôtelier (SDH), a joint Libyan and Algerian company, which still owned it in 2018. That year, the Libyan state investment company LAFICO held 66% of SDH, and the Algerian state hotel company SIH held the remaining 34%.

Sheraton's role was to run the hotel for its owner, under a management contract with SDH. The owner paid for this service, and in return the hotel carried the Sheraton name. The arrangement lasted more than 15 years, and during that time two more international hotels arrived in Oran.

New neighbours

The first came from the energy industry. In April 2010, Oran hosted LNG16, a world conference on liquefied natural gas, in a new convention centre east of the city.

Sonatrach, the national oil and gas company, owned the site, and the Spanish firm OHL built it. Today it is called the Mohammed Ben Ahmed Convention Centre, and its main auditorium seats 3,000 people.

In June 2012, Le Méridien Oran Hotel & Convention Centre opened beside it, with 296 rooms and suites for conference visitors. It was the first Le Méridien in Algeria, and Starwood, the group that ran it, described its meeting space as the largest in North Africa.

Three years later, in November 2015, a third hotel opened on the edge of the cliffs, across the road from the Sheraton tower. Four Points by Sheraton Oran belongs to SIH, the Algerian partner in the old Sheraton. It has 170 rooms and was the first Four Points hotel in Algeria.

Sheraton, Le Méridien and Four Points were all brands of the American group Starwood. In September 2016, Marriott International bought Starwood, and from then on the Sheraton and its two younger neighbours were all run by Marriott.

March 2021

Five years later, the owner of the Sheraton decided to make a change. According to the Algerian newspaper Echorouk, the management contract with Marriott ended on 1 March 2021. The Sheraton signs were removed that same day.

SDH chose to run the hotel with an Algerian team, to reduce the high cost of foreign management. The hotel also took a new name: Oran Bay.

By 2022, however, it had a new international operator: the French group Accor. Since then, it has been known as Hotel Oran Bay by Accor.

The cliffs in 2026

So the Sheraton name never really left the cliffs. In 2026, it still shines across the road from the old tower, on the Four Points by Sheraton.

Besides the Four Points, Marriott runs Le Méridien in Oran, as well as hotels in Algiers, Annaba and Constantine. Accor, for its part, has three hotels in the city: Hotel Oran Bay, the Royal Hotel Oran and the Ibis Oran les Falaises.

More than twenty years after it opened, the tower still dominates the bay. Now called Hotel Oran Bay, it has 321 rooms.

Have you ever stayed at the old Sheraton, or at one of its neighbours on Oran's cliffs?