Featured in this EMEA Hospitality Newsletter - Week Ending 16 July 2004
Travelodge Eyes A Sale And Leaseback Deal
Dawnay Shore Hotels Is The New Director Of Paramount
Orbis May Turn Etap On To Poland
A Packet Of 20 For £512 Million – Sale Now On At IHG
Segovia Tunes Up For A Second Paradores Hotel
Kerzner Holds The Aces In The UK
Mövenpick Arrives In El Alamein
Merry Of Tunbridge Wells
Sunglasses On At Marriott
Give Glasgow Abbotsinch And It'll Take 60 Acres


Travelodge Eyes A Sale And Leaseback Deal
The Travelodge hotel chain was proud to note that potential purchasers from both home and abroad had been milling around outside its door even before it gave official confirmation this week that it is looking to strike a sale and leaseback deal on 136 of its hotels on the UK mainland. Travelodge would take a lease of either 25 or 35 years on each property and hopes to raise at least £400 million from the deal, money which the company would use to speed up the roll-out of a portfolio that already numbers more than 240 hotels and to reduce its debt.

Dawnay Shore Hotels Is The New Director Of Paramount Return to Headlines
Private equity firm Alchemy Partners has been working since last autumn to find the formula for turning Paramount Hotels into gold, and this week it was successful in its quest. The recipe called for the blending together of Dawnay, Day & Co. and Shore Capital to create Dawnay Shore Hotels (DSH), which with the assistance of the Anglo Irish Bank raised £215 million to buy Paramount's collection of 13 UK properties. DSH knows that life is short – its creators intend it to live for perhaps no more than five years – and so it is already in talks to acquire other four-star hotels; the current and any extended portfolio will be managed by the existing Paramount team. Public equity investors can gain an interest in DSH through The Hotel Corporation, another new company; it is now floating on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), buoyed by the £22 million placed by Shore Capital. Shareholders should be rewarded upon DSH's eventual demise with the sight of the company's value being realised through a trade sale, a transfer of DSH's properties into a property investment fund, or flotation.

Orbis May Turn Etap On To Poland Return to Headlines
Reports in the Polish press have quoted Jean-Philippe Savoye, who was recently installed as the new President and Chief Executive of Orbis, as saying that his company is planning to introduce Poland to Accor's budget Etap brand by building between 20 and 25 hotels. The reports added that Orbis is also looking to begin work this year on the construction of a hotel (brand not specified) in the Latvian capital Riga before it crosses the border into Estonia in 2005 and heads for the capital Tallinn on an identical mission. Poland will be a new home too to Spanish chain Barceló Hotels & Resorts before the end of 2005. The company is to manage the four-star Barceló Blue City Hotel Warsaw, and construction work on the property, which is expected to have some 230 rooms, is due to start shortly.

A Packet Of 20 For £512 Million – Sale Now On At IHG Return to Headlines
InterContinental, Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza: all the big brand names are in the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) summer sale, which started this week. But hurry! Only 20 hotels are available, and IHG kindly reminds potential purchasers that they must match the price on the ticket or be disappointed. The portfolio, which has a net book value of £512 million, will be of particular interest to connoisseurs of the North American market; most of the properties for sale are there, with the InterContinental hotels in Miami and Chicago the only assets specifically mentioned by name. However, customers who prefer British produce (and who have read the report in The Times beforehand) could enquire whether IHG has the Crowne Plaza Hotel Birmingham NEC behind the counter. IHG has many satisfied customers: since demerger in April 2003 the company has sold 28 hotels – one of the latest UK properties to be sold being the 217-room Holiday Inn Gatwick Crawley – for a total of £323 million.

Segovia Tunes Up For A Second Paradores Hotel Return to Headlines
State-owned Spanish firm Segipsa is to join forces with its compatriot Paradores to build the five-star Parador de La Granja hotel in the town of Segovia in the central Castilla y León region; the 127-room hotel is expected to open in summer 2006. Meanwhile, Spanish hotel operator Guadalpin is looking to strengthen its presence in southern Spain by building a 200-room, five-star hotel and golf course in Estepona. The company already operates the five-star Gran Hotel Guadalpin Marbella further along the coast and in January 2005 it will partially open the 700-room Hotel Guadalpin Banus. The south of Spain was the setting too for the opening ceremony conducted by Grupo Penarroya to welcome a second, 740-bed hotel to the Holiday World de Benalmádena complex. The real estate firm wants the complex to have ten hotels eventually. Spain has also welcomed the 105-room Express by Holiday Inn Valencia-Bonaire as the latest in the series of 20 EHI hotels that InterContinental Hotels Group and MedGroup are bringing to the country.

Kerzner Holds The Aces In The UK Return to Headlines
Kerzner International has made sure that it has reserved its place at the table in readiness for any reform of the UK's gaming legislation. The company has three hands to play; it is the preferred developer for a hotel and casino project costing some £160 million at the Scottish Exhibition + Conference Centre in Glasgow and holds the same status in Manchester. Here, in partnership with Ask Developments, Kerzner would spend some £188 million bringing a hotel and casino to the Sportcity development. The company would be spending a similar amount of money in Greenwich in southeast London, where Kerzner has agreed to develop and operate a hotel and casino as part of the Anschutz Entertainment Group's redevelopment of the Millennium Dome.

Mövenpick Arrives In El Alamein Return to Headlines
Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts has brought five-star luxury to Egypt's Mediterranean coast with the opening of the Mövenpick Resort & Spa in El Alamein. The 264-room property is one of five hotels that will occupy a mixed-use development built by the Ghazala Tourist Development Company. If we trace our way eastwards along the coastline of Africa our finger alights eventually on the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam, where Albawardy Investment is indulging in a spot of refurbishment work. The company travelled from its base in the emirate of Dubai earlier this year to pay a reported US$3 million for the Kilimanjaro Hotel; Albawardy is spending another US$25 million turning it into the 189-room Kilimanjaro Kempinski Hotel, which is set to open this autumn. Elsewhere on the continent, chef Richard Neat has opened his eight-room hotel/restaurant Casa Lalla in the Moroccan city of Marrakech.

Merry Of Tunbridge Wells Return to Headlines
The owners of vineyards at Lamberhurst and Tenterden in Kent are reported to have plans to turn the Vale Royal Hotel in the spa town of Tunbridge Wells into an up-market property to rival the town's Hotel du Vin. It is a company from Kent – Insite Development – that has plans to wield the pick at the former Fernhill Colliery in south Wales. The company will be digging not for coal but rather the foundations for a 200-bed hotel and leisure complex it plans to have there. Meanwhile, Cendant Hotel Group Europe is looking forward to opening the 117-room Days Hotel Manchester City this August. The company assumes control of an existing hotel that shares the same building as the Manchester Conference Centre, which is part of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology's campus.

Sunglasses On At Marriott Return to Headlines
Marriott International's Chairman and Chief Executive JW Marriott, Jr declared that his company's prospects remained extremely bright, no doubt thanks to the illumination provided by the results for Marriott's second-quarter to 18 June. The resurgence in travel was reflected in a 13% increase in RevPAR across comparable properties worldwide. The company expects group and transient demand to remain strong for the rest of this year, and consequently expects RevPAR across its comparable properties in North America to grow by 7-9%.

Give Glasgow Abbotsinch And It'll Take 60 Acres Return to Headlines
Abbotsinch Properties has plans to build a hotel as part of a mixed-use development that will cover a 60-acre site at the St James Interchange near Glasgow Airport. Millionaire businesswoman Ann Gloag is more likely to have arrived in the Scottish city of Perth by bus rather than aeroplane, co-founder as she is of the company Stagecoach. She has paid a reported £4 million for the privately owned 16-room Kinfauns Castle hotel. Elsewhere, The Royal Terrace Hotel in Edinburgh is one of two properties – the other is the Hellaby Hall Hotel in South Yorkshire – now being promoted alongside the existing portfolio of Principal Hotels.

Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 08/07/04-15/07/04




Accor - Morgan Stanley raised its price target from €39 to €42 to reflect an upturn in trading in France and Germany.

InterContinental Hotels Group - A downgrade from 'Buy' to 'Hold' by Citigroup Smith Barney took the shine off praise from other analysts for IHG's latest asset sale.

Hilton Group - Citigroup Smith Barney lowered its rating from 'Buy' to 'Hold' as it felt that the hotel industry would soon be past the best of the recovery.