| Several Nickels To Be Put Into Nickelodeon Resorts By Marriott |
| Marriott International, the children’s cable television channel Nickelodeon and real estate firm Miller Global Properties are teaming up to present the world with Nickelodeon Resorts by Marriott. The first property in a chain that could have 20 links in it by 2020 is scheduled to be built in the US city of San Diego; the 650-room resort has a provisional opening date of early 2010. Miller Global will seed an investment fund that will provide an initial US$300 million for work on a brand that is designed to appeal primarily to families with children. |
| XXI Century Joy For Accor In Kiev | Return to Headlines |
| XXI Century Investments, a real estate investor and developer, has attracted Accor to its homeland of Ukraine with a wave of a management agreement covering what will be the first Sofitel property in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. The 270-room hotel will be built for an estimated sum of US$84 million on a plot measuring around 0.4 hectares that is owned by a subsidiary of XXI Century Investments. The projected completion date is 2010. | |
| Duo To Take A Mo To Revitalise The Duomo | Return to Headlines |
| The Grand Hotel Duomo has been living a life of luxury on the streets of Milan for almost 60 years, but it is not quite ready to retire yet. On the contrary, the hotel will find a new lease of life in the hands of InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). The company is working in partnership with Italian firm Gruppo Statuto to transform the building into the InterContinental Milan Grand Hotel Duomo. IHG will manage the 137-room property once renovation work is complete next year. | |
| Rocco Forte To Manage In Marrakech | Return to Headlines |
| Rocco Forte Hotels’ foray into the golf resort market began in Sicily and continues in North Africa. Assoufid Hotel has signed up Rocco Forte Hotels to manage a five-star resort that is being built at a cost of a reported US$330 million (approximately) in the Moroccan city of Marrakech. The development will offer a 90-room hotel, 80 residential villas and an 18-hole golf course when it opens at the end of 2009. | |
| Middle Eastern Investors Support United | Return to Headlines |
| United Hotels has been established in the emirate of Dubai by a group of 15 investors from the Middle East intent on spending a reported Dh1.83 billion (close to US$500 million) on the construction of up to ten hotels in the Middle East by 2015. United, led by its chief executive Jasim Al Bastaki, will manage the properties under the brand Moon Hotels. The company is already considering a site in Dubai where a four-star hotel could be in place in 2010. | |
| Sharm Dreams A Reality In Egypt | Return to Headlines |
| Sharm Dreams Company for Tourism Investment was awoken from its reverie by Holding Company for Tourism, Hotels and Cinema’s calling out that the Egyptian government was looking for bids for its stake of almost 48.4% in Rowad Misr Tourism Investment. Sharm was out of bed in an instant and first in the queue, ready to pay the government a reported US$52.7 million for the stake in a company whose Egyptian portfolio consists of three Hilton hotels and a Kempinski. Sharm Dreams will be wide awake in the coming weeks; reports suggest that the Egyptian firm has plans to buy a “major hotel group” in partnership with a selection of overseas investors and banks. | |
| From The Middle East To East Anglia With IHG | Return to Headlines |
| Bu Khamseen Group Holding has drawn InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) to Kuwait three times before, tempting the hotelier into a Holiday Inn, a Crowne Plaza and a Staybridge Suites. One flutter of a contract and IHG was by Bu Khamseen’s side again in a moment, its writing tool gripped firmly in hand ready to insert its signature in a document covering the InterContinental Kuwait. The 200-room hotel is set to open in the Kuwaiti capital in early 2009. When IHG is in the UK it finds Kew Green Hotels equally hard to resist; the number of Holiday Inns in the UK that the two have fathered has risen to 12 with the opening of the Holiday Inn Norwich City. The 150-room hotel is adjacent to Norwich City FC’s stadium; an advantage in that if occupancy ever flags, a dark-haired, middle-aged woman (a TV cook perhaps?) can appear at the front entrance shouting to potential guests, “come on, let’s be ‘aving you”. | |
| Scragg Hotels: Happy Of Tunbridge Wells | Return to Headlines |
| Using some of the money he made from the sale last year of Marston Hotels, Chris Scragg has, through his new company Scragg Hotels, paid an undisclosed sum for The Spa Hotel, an eighteenth-century property of 69 rooms in the town of Tunbridge Wells in the English county of Kent. The vendor of the four-star hotel, which had an asking price of more than £10 million, was the Goring family. According to The Times, the family will invest some of the proceeds in The Goring, their five-star hotel in London. | |
| Progress Hopes To Progress In Glasgow | Return to Headlines |
| Though the hotel might have been conceived in London, Charles Price, the chief executive of Progress Property Developments, intends that the “six-star” property will be born where he was: in Glasgow. The 158-room proposed Argyle International Hotel, which will rise, subject to planning permission, in the International Financial Services District of the city, will have a set of 68 serviced apartments attached: the first instance in Scotland of purpose-built serviced apartments being joined to a luxury hotel. | |
| Sheraton Makes Its Name In The Gambia | Return to Headlines |
| The Sheraton brand: unknown in The Gambia and a distant memory in the Turkish city of Istanbul. But wait! Here is Starwood Hotels & Resorts to instil familiarity in West Africa and restore faded remembrance in Turkey. In The Gambia the company has signed a management agreement with Kharafi Holdings, an affiliate of the Kuwaiti Al Kharafi Group, that heralds the opening later this year of the five-star Sheraton Gambia Beach Resort. The 198-room hotel occupies a site at Brufut Heights, on the outskirts of the Gambian capital Banjul. In Istanbul, parents who have had their sleeves tugged over the last 13 years by children asking, “what’s a Sheraton?” can finally silence them by pointing to the freshly renovated 305-room Sheraton Istanbul Maslak, which has opened under a franchise with OC Turizm. | |
| Norgani Hotels Buys In Bodø | Return to Headlines |
| Norgani Hotels, the Norwegian hotel property investor, has agreed to pay Wiland Eiendom NKr87 million (€10.7 million) for the Rica Hotel Bodø. The 113-room property is Norgani’s second hotel in the Norwegian city of Bodø. The other is a Radisson SAS, a breed that may be found too further north up the coast, in the port of Tromsø. And my how the Radisson SAS Hotel, Tromsø has grown since last we saw it. An extension has added 83 rooms to the 186 already present, and those 186 have been fully refurbished. Meanwhile, over the border, in Sweden, Home Properties, the Swedish hotel property company, has agreed to pay SKr40 million (€4.3 million) for Öresundspaviljongen, a former exhibition centre in the southern city of Malmö. The company has plans to redevelop the property into a 250-room hotel with spa facilities. | |
| Principal Hotels Answers A Conference Call | Return to Headlines |
| The talk around tables in conference rooms up and down the land is of Principal Hotels and its purchase of Hayley Conference Centres for £358 million. Quiet at the back, eyes on the screen as the salient features of the deal are shown PowerPoint-style. • Vendors: Hayley’s founding management team and 3i • Eight residential conference centres in “stately home” properties in England • 299 meeting rooms and 1,256 bedrooms • Deal takes Principal Hotels into Paris, where the Château de Saint Just will open in 2008. | |
| Carlson Raises Its Stake In Rezidor | Return to Headlines |
| As Rezidor Hotel Group began its flotation on the Stockholm exchange last November, Carlson Hotels Worldwide paid SAS Group €86 million to take its holding in Rezidor from 25% to 35%. Carlson has raised its stake again, to 41.7%, by paying SAS Group €63.5 million for the 6.7% stake that SAS Group always intended to sell. The deal completes SAS Group's exit from Rezidor. | |
Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 24/05/07-31/05/07
InterContinental Hotels Group - HSBC lowered its rating to 'Neutral' from 'Overweight' but kept its target price of 1,455p.
Whitbread - The share price made late gains on rumours that the company had entered into exclusive talks with London & Regional Properties about the proposed sale of David Lloyd Leisure.
NH Hoteles - Renewed takeover speculation helped lift the share price.
