Featured in this EMEA Hospitality Newsletter - Week Ending 3 March 2006
Accor Sells A Sofitel But Gains A Novotel
Corus Hotels Sells 19 UK Hotels
Consortium Has Its Eye On Ethiopia's Ghion Hotels
Shangri-La's Three-In-One Offer Opens In Oman
Premier Travel Inn Provides A 50-Week Positive
The ABC Of A Year At Sol Meliá
Hyatt Regency To Come To Dushanbe
Former Fiat Factory Turns Out A Hotel For Hilton
Villa Kennedy Opens In Frankfurt
InterContinental Hotels Group Posts Its Full-Year Results
Relive 2005 With NH Hoteles
Hotel Forecast For Sea Area Cromarty


Accor Sells A Sofitel But Gains A Novotel
Accor has earmarked 50 hotels for disposal as part of its asset management strategy. One of them is the Sofitel Paris Forum Rive Gauche Hotel, in Paris; Marriott International has acquired the 782-room property for an undisclosed sum. The hotel’s new name is the Rive Gauche Saint-Jacques Hotel & Conference Center. Accor still has 13 Sofitel hotels in the French capital, and could soon find itself with nine Novotel hotels in the English capital. A 206-room, four-star Novotel will rise, subject to planning permission, at the PaddingtonCentral development in West London after Accor signed an agreement with Development Securities and Morley Fund Management.

Corus Hotels Sells 19 UK Hotels Return to Headlines
So, that’s 19 hotels in the UK and the entire issued share capital in The Reservation Company…that’ll be a total of £116 million, please, said Corus Hotels to Washington Hotels. The assortment of 18 three-star hotels and one two-star hotel (the Maids Head Hotel, in Norwich) that Washington Hotels will be dipping into from its headquarters in London offers a choice of centres – Bristol, Leicester, Manchester and Warwick, for example. A taste of Scotland is provided by the 121-room Corus Hotel Glasgow and the 77-room Corus Hotel Edinburgh North. The portfolio has a total of 1,326 rooms.

Consortium Has Its Eye On Ethiopia's Ghion Hotels Return to Headlines
Ethiopian Airlines is reported to be keen on taking on the management of the Ghion Hotels chain, which is owned by the Ethiopian government. The company is said to have identified two international hotel management companies – one from South Africa and the other from the UK – that it would like to form a consortium with. Two of the six hotels in the Ghion Hotels chain are in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. Elsewhere in Africa, the city of Johannesburg, in South Africa, could be celebrating 2006 as the year of the condominium hotel. Urban Hip Hotels is reported to be ready to bring three such properties to the city. Two of the hotels would occupy buildings – The Franklin and Shakespeare Place – currently under redevelopment by Urban Ocean.

Shangri-La's Three-In-One Offer Opens In Oman Return to Headlines
Prince Charles might not be the only royal to keep a diary that makes reference to Hong Kong. If HH Sayyid Haitham bin Tariq Al Said of the Omani royal family keeps one, then his entry for 27 February might have read: “Met Shangri-La Hotels (from Hong Kong) in Muscat today at the grand opening of its Barr Al Jissah Resort & Spa. Three hotels in one. 680 rooms.” Meanwhile, Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts did not appear to have any royal presence at its official opening party held on the shores of the Red Sea in Egypt, but it did have Johnny Mathis. Admittedly, this was not the singer, but his namesake who is the general manager of the hotel complex in honour of which the party was thrown: the 434-room, five-star Mövenpick Resort Taba.

Premier Travel Inn Provides A 50-Week Positive Return to Headlines
Those who want to know the results from Whitbread for the first 50 weeks of its financial year ending 16 February 2006 may care to cover their eyes if they are distressed by the sight of negative sales growth. The greatest slump (3.7%) in like-for-like sales appeared among restaurants on the high street. Persons may remove their blindfolds if they want to know what the score is with Premier Travel Inn; the portfolio was the sole provider of positive growth (6.9%) in like-for-like sales. The chain also celebrated reaching the 30,000-room mark, a feat it achieved with the opening in London of the Hammersmith Premier Travel Inn (formerly the Best Western Vencourt Hotel).

The ABC Of A Year At Sol Meliá Return to Headlines
Sol Meliá listed three reasons for the growth it saw over the 12 months to 31 December 2005. To take reason ‘a’ as an example; a in the Sol Meliá alphabet is for hotel division, which posted a 7.4% increase, to €48.1, in RevPAR. Hotels in Spanish cities were singled out for special praise. The company saw total revenues rise by 10.7%, to almost €1.2 billion, and EBITDA increase by 20.5%, to €288.1 million. Sol Meliá views 2006 in a mood of “general optimism”.

Hyatt Regency To Come To Dushanbe Return to Headlines
Construction work was due to have started on 1 March on what will reportedly be the first five-star hotel in the city of Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. The result of Russian Hotels’ collaboration with Hyatt International will be a 242-room Hyatt Regency hotel, which should be ready by summer 2007. Reports indicate that the project will cost US$65 million. While you are waiting, how about spending a night at the Opera. This 50-room, four-star hotel is now open in the Ukrainian city of Lviv.

Former Fiat Factory Turns Out A Hotel For Hilton Return to Headlines
Hilton International announced towards the end of last year that the Hilton Florence Metropole would be its first hotel in the Italian city of Florence. And towards the end of this year Florentines can expect the arrival of a second: the 121-room Scandic by Hilton Florence Novoli, which will be part of a development occupying the former site of a Fiat factory. Mita Hotels owns both hotels.

Villa Kennedy Opens In Frankfurt Return to Headlines
It is just over two years since Rocco Forte Hotels announced that the Villa Kennedy would be one of two hotels that it intended opening in Germany in 2006. True to its word, the company opened this 163-room hotel in the city of Frankfurt on 1 March. The second hotel is the Hotel de Rome in Berlin, and it is on course for a September opening.

InterContinental Hotels Group Posts Its Full-Year Results Return to Headlines
InterContinental Hotels Group has posted its results for the year to 31 December 2005. The company recorded a pre-tax profit of £284 million, an increase on the previous year of approximately 8%, and total revenue of £1.9 billion, a fall of 13.3%. The worldwide hotel portfolio saw RevPAR grow by 9.0%.

Relive 2005 With NH Hoteles Return to Headlines
NH Hoteles noted the “good performance of the hotel business” as it posted its financial results for the year to 31 December 2005. That business’s contribution to total company revenue of €984.7 million was €901.2 million, this latter figure being an increase on the previous year of 4.6%. NH Hoteles recorded a net income for the year of €62.2 million, up 12.8% on the previous year.

Hotel Forecast For Sea Area Cromarty Return to Headlines
Reports note that Mohamed Al Fayed has for some years harboured an ambition to open a hotel on an oil rig. The project took a step nearer fulfilment this week when two oil companies (neither of them named in reports) offered the chairman of Harrods a platform on which to build. The earliest date that work could begin on the 50-room hotel in the Cromarty Firth, northeastern Scotland, is 2008.

Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 23/02/06-02/03/06




NH Hoteles - Takeover speculation surrounded the company again.

Accor - UBS expects an upbeat set of results from Accor next week.

InterContinental Hotels Group - ABN Amro maintained a 'Buy' rating. However, despite similarly positive sentiment from other analysts the share price fell, owing to profit taking.