| Five-Star Sector Bows To The Royal Tulip |
| Hoteliers, particularly those of a horticultural bent, will be interested to hear of a new species of tulip: a Royal Tulip, no less, which will flourish in the five-star sector. Golden Tulip Hospitality (GTH) announced that the 210-room Royal Tulip Amsterdam Symphony would be the first hotel to flower; it is due to arrive in the Dutch city of Amsterdam in spring 2009. GTH noted that the soil in Berlin, the Moroccan city of Casablanca, Dallas, in the USA, and Mirbāţ, in the sultanate of Oman, is also suitable for growing the brand. GTH wants to have around 40 Royal Tulip hotels in four to five years’ time and the company will promote growth by rebranding certain Golden Tulip properties and developing new hotels in gateway cities. GTH will still tend to its stock of Golden Tulips though. The latest to bloom is the Golden Tulip Apollo Amsterdam, on which hotel GTH has signed a long-term franchise agreement. The 219-room property, which is to be operated by European Hotel Management, was formerly part of the Le Meridien chain. |
| Element To Heat Up The Extended Stay Sector | Return to Headlines |
| If XYZ equals aloft, then what does ESW equal? Employees of Starwood Hotels & Resorts will already be shouting the answer at their computer screens: Element! Project XYZ was the working title of the brand that became aloft in September 2005. Similarly, Project ESW, announced as a working title in June 2006, becomes Element, the brand that will launch Starwood into the extended stay sector. In the words of Starwood, aloft ‘took its DNA’ from the W brand. The genetic material for Element has been extracted from Westin Hotels & Resorts. Starwood expects to develop 500 of the new hotels worldwide. | |
| Welcome To Losan Hotels World | Return to Headlines |
| Losan Hotels World is the invention of two Spanish firms: Losan, an investment company, and Ahorro Corporación, a financial services company. So what does this invention do? Well, it has been designed to acquire four-star and five-star hotels in capital cities. One simply feeds in €700 million and watches as what one Spanish newspaper describes as the largest hotel investment firm in Europe sets off to acquire 15 hotels in Europe and North America. Losan Hotels World has been programmed to deposit its haul at the feet of any hotelier that shows an interest in operating the properties. The new firm comes pre-loaded with the nine European hotels that Losan already owns. | |
| Mandarin Oriental To Manage Residences In London | Return to Headlines |
| You want new luxury residences? Go seek them in Hyde Park! Part the shrubbery and you will see Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group keeping watch from its hotel (the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park) on the development of One Hyde Park. This mixed-use project, which should be ready in 2009, will contain 80 luxury residences that Mandarin Oriental will manage under the name The Residences at Mandarin Oriental. After our experiences in the park, we must progress to a monastery; but worry not, for the monks are long gone. This fourteenth-century monastery in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, is home now to Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group's fifth hotel in Europe: the 99-room Mandarin Oriental, Prague. | |
| Discover America By Sailing East; Keep An Eye Out For Pirates | Return to Headlines |
| Bawadi is the mixed-use development in Dubai that aims to have 31 themed hotels (29,200 rooms) within its demesne by 2014. One of them will be the 6,500-room Asia-Asia, the world’s largest hotel; now the identity of two more has been revealed. America Hotels & Resorts is the name on a 500-room, three-star hotel that Zabeel Investments will be developing on behalf of Tatweer, the company behind Bawadi. The theme of this hotel is New York; the property will stage Broadway shows and will have a street modelled on Fifth Avenue adjoining. The third hotel to find a name is Pirates Cove Hotel & Resorts, a four-star property with 800 rooms that will be developed by Gantoot Star General Trading. | |
| Kingdom Hotel Investments Establishes Mövenpick Bur Dubai Residences | Return to Headlines |
| Kingdom Hotel Investments has paid US$24.9 million for a building that stands next to the Mövenpick Hotel Bur Dubai, in the emirate of Dubai. The company will invest an additional US$4.4 million in the refurbishment of the newly built property, which will open in the first quarter of next year as a set of 63 five-star serviced apartments known as the Mövenpick Bur Dubai Residences. Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts not only has a new neighbour to welcome but also has a second hotel in Kuwait to celebrate. The company has signed a management agreement with Alargan International Real Estate covering the 308-room, five-star Mövenpick Resort & Residence Al Bidaa Kuwait, which is due to open at the end of this year. | |
| Happiness Is A Warm Hotel | Return to Headlines |
| Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) is the firm in charge of the task of developing 29 hotels on Saadiyat, an island lying just off the coast of the emirate of Abu Dhabi. TDIC has given the job of constructing the first hotel to Al Jaber Group, a development firm from Abu Dhabi, which will work on a de luxe 400-room resort on Saadiyat Beach. Saadiyat means ‘happiness’ in Arabic, and TDIC will no doubt be smiling if it has all 29 hotels completed by its target date of 2018. | |
| Hilwood Takes Bovey Castle | Return to Headlines |
| Hilwood Resorts and Hotels announced its arrival in March by paying De Vere Group £15.55 million for the De Vere Grand, a 118-room hotel in St Helier, on the island of Jersey. The joint venture has followed up this purchase by venturing onto Dartmoor, in Devon, and capturing the five-star Bovey Castle from entrepreneur Peter de Savary. The 65-room hotel and golf resort was priced at £26.4 million. Delancey, an investment advisor, established Hilwood in partnership with Gregor Ritchie and Arvinder Walia for the purposes of acquiring and operating four-star and five-star hotels in the UK. | |
| Bewley's Brews Up A Sale In Glasgow | Return to Headlines |
| Bewley’s Hotels has sold its hotel in Glasgow for more than £10 million (the exact amount was not disclosed). The company, which now has two hotels in the UK and four at home in the Republic of Ireland, clinched a deal with Rossmark Hotel Group as the 104-room hotel did not fit with Bewley’s Hotels' strategy of developing hotels with more than 300 rooms. The hotel, which is Rossmark’s first purchase, will trade under the Bewley’s name until later this year, when it will be refurbished and relaunched. | |
| Talking About Willis | Return to Headlines |
| The listed building at Ten Trinity Square, in the City of London, has served as the global headquarters of Willis Group Holdings for 30 years. The insurance broker is though relocating to Liverpool in 2008 and as soon as it leaves developers will descend on Ten Trinity Square and turn the building into a super-luxury hotel having a minimum of 100 rooms. Willis has sold the property to the US firm Thomas Enterprises for close to a reported £110 million, and Thomas will spend a reported £150 million on the conversion. | |
| Hatch To Be Reopened As A Luxury Hotel | Return to Headlines |
| Edward Holdings, the Irish property developer, acquired Hatch Hall in 2004 and launched Monogram Hotels the same year. In 2006 the property in Dublin met its future operator as Edward Holdings secured permission to redevelop Hatch Hall as a luxury 81-room hotel. The new arrival will be Monogram’s third hotel in the Republic of Ireland; it operates the d hotel in Drogheda and the g hotel in Galway. Dublin awaits one hotel, but has secured another. Prem Group has opened the sixth hotel in the Republic of Ireland to take the Days Hotel name: the 146-room Days Hotel Park West, which stands on the Park West Business Campus. | |
| CHE Hotel Group Reports Its Interims; Appoints CEO | Return to Headlines |
| CHE Hotel Group has reported a pre-tax loss of £4.0 million for the first six months of 2006. This compares with a loss of £1.8 million in the comparable period of a year ago. The gap was widened by the disruption to the company’s business caused by an extensive programme of refurbishment. Turnover was up by almost 1.1% on the previous year’s comparable, to £37.6 million, but RevPAR across the company’s hotels in the UK was 2.3% lower, at £23.86. Towards the end of 2006, a year that CHE Hotel Group’s chairman Peter Catesby has described as one of “transition” for the company, David Cook will be retiring. He has been succeeded as chief executive by Michael Prager, who since June has been CHE Hotel Group’s chief operating officer. | |
Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 14/09/06-21/09/06
Accor - Goldman Sachs maintained a 'Buy' rating on the stock, though it lowered its target price from €62 to €61.
InterContinental Hotels Group - JP Morgan reiterated its 'Overweight' rating.
Whitbread - Deutsche Bank noted that if the company were to adopt an REIT structure then significant value could be released.
