Hilton Hotels Ponders An Autumn Sale |
Hilton Hotels Corporation (HHC) expects to have placed ten hotels (3,328 rooms) in Europe on the market by the end of September. Germany occupies three pages in the proposed sales catalogue with the Hilton Düsseldorf, the Hilton Dresden and the Hilton Weimar. France and Spain will each need two pages for the Hilton Charles de Gaulle Airport, the Hilton Strasbourg, the Hilton Barcelona and Los Zocos Villa Resort (in the Canary Islands). Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg will find one page is sufficient for their respective offerings of the Hilton Brussels, the Hilton Zurich Airport and the Hilton Luxembourg. Prospective purchasers flicking through the brochure may by September know more of HHC’s plans for the Scandic brand. HHC is considering selling all or part of a business that flies its flag outside 130 hotels. |
Bannatyne Fitness Exercises Its Spending Muscle | Return to Headlines |
Bannatyne Fitness has added extra muscle to its chain of 36 health clubs in the UK by paying Hilton International around £90 million for 24 health and fitness clubs in Hilton’s LivingWell Premier chain. The sales process was initiated in May this year. The properties being sold, which will be rebranded Bannatyne Fitness, are those unattached to a Hilton hotel. Hilton will use the proceeds from the deal to trim its debt. |
Quinn Group Buys The Sheraton Krakow Hotel | Return to Headlines |
Quinn Group has two hotels at home in Ireland, and others in the UK, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria: a total of eight. The company's ninth hotel will be in Poland. PKO Bank Polski, its compatriot NDI, the Belgian firm Besix and Starwood Hotels & Resorts have sold the five-star Sheraton Krakow Hotel for €45 million. Starwood will continue to manage the 232-room hotel under the Sheraton brand. |
Quintain Plays A One-Two With Hilton Down Wembley Way | Return to Headlines |
Quintain Estates & Development is to build a 400-room hotel at Wembley, in northwest London, and has signed up Hilton International to manage it. The property, which will cost £91.5 million to construct, will be operated by Maple Hotels Management Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hilton Hotels Corporation (HHC), and should be ready by 2010. Quintain has also paid £11.5 million – £10 million for the building and the balance for refurbishment work – for the Wembley Plaza hotel. This 306-room property is operated by Comfort Hotels, another of HHC’s subsidiaries. The hotel site will form part of the redevelopment of the western portion of the Wembley project after 2010. |
Hotel du Vin United With Newcastle | Return to Headlines |
Newcastle upon Tyne is one of several cities in the UK that has had its name linked in recent months with the expansion plans of Hotel du Vin. Now, it would seem, a marriage has been arranged. The boutique chain is to create a 42-room hotel in the Ouseburn area by investing a reported £8 million in the conversion of Allan House, a nineteenth-century building that was once home to the Tyne Tees Shipping Company. The hotel is scheduled to open in February 2008. Meanwhile, though STR Enterprises is based in Newcastle, it has preferred Wearside to Tyneside on this occasion. The leisure firm wants to build a 70-room, four-star hotel at its Quayside Exchange conference centre in the port of Sunderland. |
Pandox Acquires The Radisson SAS Hotel In Malmö | Return to Headlines |
Pandox has stayed at home in Sweden to conduct its latest purchase. The hotel property company has paid its compatriot Wihlborgs Fastigheter, a real estate firm, 260 million Swedish kronor (€28.3 million) for the 229-room Radisson SAS Hotel in the southern city of Malmö. Pandox now has three hotels (a total of 607 rooms) in the city and will take charge of its newest acquisition on 1 September. |
Si Has Its Eye On Three Ramada Hotels | Return to Headlines |
Strategic Investment Management, an independent property investment firm from Edinburgh, is ready to launch a cross-border raid into England that is designed to capture three Ramada hotels. By the end of August the company’s Si Limited Partnership No. 5 should have completed the purchase of the properties in Birmingham, Gatwick and Hatfield, which have a total of 449 rooms, for a reported £73 million. |
Kazakh Company In Kempinski Clinch | Return to Headlines |
Reports in the Turkish press note that Kazmunaigaz, an oil and gas producer owned by the government of Kazakhstan, has sunk some of its cash reserves into the Kempinski Hotel Barbaros Bay. Two Turkish families combined their respective holdings of 50% and 25% and sold the whole for a reported US$60 million. The 173-room hotel resides in the resort of Bodrum, in southern Turkey. The journey made by Peterburgskaya Nedvizhimost, a real estate firm, has been short in comparison. Steeled by the success of its 140-room, three-star Andersen Hotel in its home city of St Petersburg, the company has plans to venture to the coastal town of Petrodvorets to build a hotel complex. Work on the US$220 million project is set to begin in November 2007 and will take four years to complete. |
Queensgate Hotel Whisked Away By Concorde | Return to Headlines |
The Queensgate Hotel in the South Kensington district of London was the property whose purchase launched Niche Hotels. Still, best not to get too dewy-eyed about the events of nearly four years ago, as Niche Hotels has sold the 26-room property to Concorde Hotels for more than £6 million. Elsewhere in London, Westminster City Council has given the go-ahead for the demolition of the Swiss Centre on Leicester Square in the West End. Construction firm McAleer & Rushe paid British Land £47 million for the building in 2004 and in March 2006 submitted plans to redevelop the site as a mixed-use scheme featuring a four-star hotel of up to 250 rooms. |
Potter Appointed As Corinthia's Chief Executive | Return to Headlines |
Millennium & Copthorne announced at the end of last month that its chief executive of the last two years Tony Potter was leaving the company. Mr Potter was this week named as the new chief executive of Corinthia Hotels International, and he will assist in the development and growth of a company that currently manages 20 four-star and five-star hotels in Europe and Africa. |
Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 03/08/06-10/08/06
Millennium & Copthorne - Morgan Stanley gave an 'Equal-weight' rating and raised its target price from 380p to 430p.
NH Hoteles - The company will be admitted to the Ibex-35 index on 17 August.
InterContinental Hotels Group - UBS repeated its 'Buy' rating at the end of last week.