Featured in this EMEA Hospitality Newsletter - Week Ending 9 June 2006
Mövenpick Gets The Result It Wanted In Frankfurt
Pandox Triumphant In Berlin
Norgani Hotels Settles To Talks With Kapiteeli
Home Properties Takes A Stake In Rica Hotels
Accor To Sell Most Of Its Shares In Club Med
Accor Takes Wing In Turkey
Clal Tourism Planning To Sell Hotels In Israel
CHE Hotel Group Issues A Trading Update
Bavaria Hotels International Hands Round The Suites
Geoga To Step Down At Global Hyatt
Uganda Welcomes Kingdom Hotel Investments
Redquartz Buys Hotel On Paddy Kelly's Doorstep


Mövenpick Gets The Result It Wanted In Frankfurt
England and Paraguay? Huh! There’s only one pairing in Frankfurt that fans of Mövenpick Hotels are interested in: that of their side and Vivico Real Estate. Mövenpick ended 20 months of anticipation this week by announcing the official opening of the 288-room, four-star Mövenpick Hotel Frankfurt City. The company will expect guests’ faces to light up, but guests may light up neither pipe nor cigarette; the property is Mövenpick’s first non-smoking hotel.

Pandox Triumphant In Berlin Return to Headlines
Swedish hotel property company Pandox has paid Azure Property Investments an undisclosed sum for the Hotel Berlin. The property is Pandox’s fourth hotel in Germany, and is one that the company will operate and manage itself, although it is amenable to a “well-known brand” being placed above the door. Pandox has plans to invest up to €8 million over the next two to three years in repositioning the 701-room hotel in the meeting and event sector.

Norgani Hotels Settles To Talks With Kapiteeli Return to Headlines
Norwegian hotel property company Norgani Hotels expects to have completed the purchase of 15 hotels in Finland by the end of June. The properties, which have a total of 2,913 rooms, are in the gift of Finnish property investment firm Kapiteeli, which will also hand on to Norgani the title of ‘second-largest hotel property owner in Finland’ when the deal is concluded. Twelve of the hotels, which are changing hands for a sum as yet undisclosed, fly either the Scandic or the Hilton flag.

Home Properties Takes A Stake In Rica Hotels Return to Headlines
Home Properties, the Swedish company formerly known as Capona, has acquired a stake of 39.3% in Norwegian chain Rica Hotels for around 623 million Swedish kronor (some €68 million). Home Properties purchased its shares from a mix of companies, chief among them the Norwegian industrial conglomerate Orkla. The transaction means that Home Properties is second only to Jan Rivelsrud in the stakeholder table; Rivelsrud owns 52% of Rica Hotels, a company that he co-founded.

Accor To Sell Most Of Its Shares In Club Med Return to Headlines
In June 2004 Accor announced that it had become the main shareholder in Club Méditerranée (Club Med) on its acquiring a stake of 28.9%. In June 2006 Accor announces that it is to sell a stake of 22.9%. A stake of 16% has been sold immediately, for €44.9 a share, to a group of investors that Accor will work with. Accor named none of this group, but the press identified two of the three parties concerned as Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion du Maroc, and Air France-KLM. Accor will sell the remaining 6.9% in due course, with Generali France having already put its name down for a portion of 1.5%.

Accor Takes Wing In Turkey Return to Headlines
Accotel celebrates its first anniversary on 10 June. As paper is the material traditionally associated with such an occasion, how appropriate that the press should devote a few inches of newsprint to an update on the company formed when Accor and Turkish firm Akfen Holding were married by contract last year. The pair established Accotel to construct, among other things, Ibis and Novotel hotels in cities across Turkey. Reports suggest that 12 of the total of 50 hotels planned (40 of them taking the Ibis brand) will be ready by 2009. The entire project, which is costing a reported €300 million, should be finished by 2015.

Clal Tourism Planning To Sell Hotels In Israel Return to Headlines
Israeli company Clal Tourism is reportedly planning the sale of the properties in the Accor-Clal Hotels chain. The chain was set up in 1995 as a joint venture between Clal Tourism and Accor. Six of the seven hotels that Accor has in Israel are controlled by Accor-Clal Hotels: three with the Mercure brand, two Novotels and one Etap. The six share a total of 1,214 rooms.

CHE Hotel Group Issues A Trading Update Return to Headlines
CHE Hotel Group is hopeful that pain will lead to pleasure; that the temporary inconvenience caused by its intensive programme of refurbishment will be outweighed come the stronger business period of the autumn by the company's having a smart set of hotels to offer its guests. CHE Hotel Group expects that the disruption caused by the refurbishment work will wipe around £1 million off the figures it had been predicting for the six months to 30 June 2006. Alongside its trading update CHE Hotel Group announced that its chief executive David Cook would be retiring on health grounds at the end of November.

Bavaria Hotels International Hands Round The Suites Return to Headlines
In the hotel world, no country need be wary of accepting suites from strangers. The stranger on the shore of the United Arab Emirates is the German company Bavaria Hotels International and it has a bag bulging with 4,650 suites. Of these, 2,100 will be given to Dubai, which is to welcome the Bavaria Executive Suites Dubai in March 2007. A year later and Sharjah will draw its allotted share of 350 suites and open the Bavaria Executive Suites Sharjah. Both emirates, though, will be casting envious glances across the Gulf at Qatar. It will be tucking into the 2,200 suites of the Bavaria City Suites Doha in the first quarter of 2007.

Geoga To Step Down At Global Hyatt Return to Headlines
Doug Geoga will step down as the president of Global Hyatt Corporation (GHC) on 30 June and go away to form a hospitality investment firm. Mark Hoplamazian, the current president of The Pritzker Organization, a firm of merchant bankers, will become GHC’s interim president on 1 July.

Uganda Welcomes Kingdom Hotel Investments Return to Headlines
Kingdom Hotel Investments (KHI) is to have its first hotel in Uganda. KHI has taken a 99-year lease from the government of the East African nation on a 15-acre site in the country’s capital Kampala. A 250-room first class property is due to open on the site towards the end of 2009.

Redquartz Buys Hotel On Paddy Kelly's Doorstep Return to Headlines
Reports from the Republic of Ireland indicate that Redquartz, an investment vehicle chaired by Paddy Kelly, is to pay €20 million for the Days Hotel Dublin Airport. The 88-room property, which forms part of the Santry Cross mixed-use development, is set to open on 1 July. Paddy Kelly is also the leading investor in Prem Group, which in December 2003 agreed to help Cendant Corporation in the development of the Days Hotel and Days Inn brands across the Republic of Ireland.

Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 01/06/06-08/06/06




InterContinental Hotels Group - A 'Buy' rating from Citigroup and upbeat comments from other brokers allowed the share price to buck the general downward trend of the FTSE 100.

CHE Hotel Group - The share price slipped after the company warned that interim results would fall well below its expectations.

Accor - Though Lehman Brothers kept its 'Overweight' rating and raised its target price from €57 to €61, the Paris market in general fell in sympathy with Wall Street, where interest rates continued to cause concern.