| London The First To Accept Global Hyatt's Andaz Challenge |
| Andaz – the Hindustani word for “personal style” – is the newest brand in the world of Global Hyatt Corporation (GHC). The first property to wear the luxury brand will be the Great Eastern Hotel in London, which GHC and JER Partners purchased last year. The 267-room hotel at Liverpool Street railway station will take its new name when renovation work ends this September. GHC’s recently acquired hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York is likely to be the next Andaz hotel; the company is also considering flying the new flag in cities including Moscow and Beijing. |
| Hamburg's Vier Jahreszeiten Makes It Four For Fairmont In Europe | Return to Headlines |
| The Fairmont brand will replace the Raffles name above the door of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten on 30 April. The 157-room hotel, which stands on the shores of the Inner Alster Lake in the city of Hamburg, will be Fairmont Hotels & Resorts' first hotel in Germany and its fourth in Europe (the others being The Savoy, in London, the Fairmont St Andrews, in Scotland, and the Fairmont Monte Carlo). | |
| Principal Hotels Has Eyes For Hawkstone Park | Return to Headlines |
| We know that Principal Hotels entered Wales last month to purchase The St David’s Hotel & Spa. The company’s tour bus must have exited the principality close to the English border town of Shrewsbury for the company stopped in the nearby village of Weston-under-Redcastle, not for a picnic but for another full-blown feast of acquisitive activity. Principal Hotels paid Mark Boler close to a reported £11 million for the 66-room Hawkstone Park, a hotel set in 400 acres of countryside and one offering a choice of three golf courses. Hawkstone Park is Principal’s sixth hotel in England. | |
| Four For Prem Group In Belgium | Return to Headlines |
| Prem Group has completed a promised quartet of hotels in Belgium. The 149-room Bedford Hotel, which stands in the eastern city of Liège, joins the Golden Tulip Hotel Antwerp, the Tulip Inn Antwerp-Astoria Hotel and the Ramada Plaza Antwerp in a portfolio that the Irish hotel management firm has been assembling since November. | |
| Novotel Showcased In Sharjah | Return to Headlines |
| The latest exhibit at the Expo Centre Sharjah is a pile of bricks. Yes, you could have saved yourself a journey to the United Arab Emirates and just popped down Tate Modern instead, but remember that before the year is out this particular pile of bricks will be dynamic art. Bricklayers will arrive to transform the pile into the 15-storey Novotel Sharjah Expo Centre. The Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry chose Accor to manage the 200-room hotel, which should be in operation by December 2009. | |
| Bulldozers In The Belfry? | Return to Headlines |
| The Times reports that Quinn Group has drawn up plans to replace the 324-room hotel at The Belfry near Birmingham, in central England, with a 500-room hotel complex in a wholesale renovation of the site. The Irish company paid £186 million for The Belfry, home of the famous golf course, in 2005 and might spend as much as £200 million on the renovation. The newspaper added that “a deal was struck” between Quinn Group and De Vere Hotels, the operator of The Belfry. | |
| Aldar Properties Wants A Taste Of Coconut | Return to Headlines |
| Coconut Island and a larger neighbouring island lie just off the coast of the emirate of Abu Dhabi. If you have a clear view with the naked eye from either island of the InterContinental Abu Dhabi then you can be confident that you are in the correct territorial waters. Reports from the Middle East note that Aldar Properties and the National Corporation for Tourism & Hotels have plans to bridge the two islands by creating a five-star resort offering a mix of facilities including 128 guest rooms, ten private villas, and a selection of five-bedroom villas for the exclusive use of UAE nationals. | |
| Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright | Return to Headlines |
| Tiger Developments is reported to have signed up both InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) and Travelodge to operate a hotel apiece at Tiger’s proposed redevelopment of the former Morrison Street Goods Yard in the Scottish city of Edinburgh. For IHG a 160-room Crowne Plaza hotel awaits; for Travelodge its usual budget property, this one with 200 rooms. Tiger is expected to submit its application for the £200 million scheme in June. A projected completion date of 2012 has been set. | |
| A Hotel In Glasgow Is Forrest's Delight | Return to Headlines |
| Forrest Developments, part of the Glasgow-based Forrest Group, is a company more usually associated with the construction of retail facilities. However, Forrest Developments might soon be ready to enter the hotel sector, having reportedly drawn up plans to convert the former RAC Roadside Services Centre in the Scottish city of Glasgow into a hotel of up to 150 rooms that would have either a three-star or a five-star rating. Forrest paid a reported £4.6 million for the 1.4-acre site on the banks of the River Clyde and is said to be ready to spend £40 million on the hotel. | |
| Swiss-Belhotel Rings The Middle East | Return to Headlines |
| Swiss-Belhotel International has from its base in Hong Kong been thus far content to manage hotels in the Far East. However, according to reports, the company is ready to move into the Middle East. It is said to have taken over an existing property in Kuwait (to be renamed Swiss-Belhotel Plaza Kuwait) and to have two five-star hotels under construction: the Swiss-Belhotel Sharma Resort, in Saudi Arabia, and the Swiss-Belhotel Amman, in the Jordanian capital Amman. | |
| Golden Tulip Hospitality The Manager In Düsseldorf And Antwerp | Return to Headlines |
| Call out, “Golden Tulip Grand Hotel Düsseldorf” and western Germany will respond with silence. Even if bricks could shout back, they would anyway hold their tongues; for they know that the hotel they form answers now to the name Golden Tulip Düsseldorf City-Süd. The change comes as Golden Tulip Hospitality (GTH) takes over the management of the 70-room hotel, which has operated under the Golden Tulip franchise for nine years. If bricks could talk, then the babble of their excited chatter about being part of a new hotel would surely draw you over the border into Belgium, where GTH is to manage the Golden Tulip Antwerp Centre. The 174-room hotel, which is set to open in September, will occupy one of a set of three towers being built in the city of Antwerp by the developer Robelco. | |
| Downing Signs For Newcastle | Return to Headlines |
| After just over three years of consultation with the council in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, in northeast England, the property development firm Downing is ready with its plans for the transformation of the former Scottish & Newcastle Brewery at Gallowgate, next to St James’ Park football stadium, into the city’s largest mixed-use development. The £200 million project would give the site a 200-room, four-star hotel, offices, retail and a student village. | |
Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 05/04/07-12/04/07
Sol Meliá - UBS raised its target price just before Easter from €15.75 to €18.90 and retained a 'Neutral' rating.
Whitbread - Merrill Lynch placed a 'Buy' rating towards the end of last week.
InterContinental Hotels Group - JP Morgan raised its target price before Easter to 1,420p.
