| Moor Park Ties Up A Deal For 91 Accor Hotels |
| Accor has struck its second substantial sale and leaseback deal in the space of a few weeks. Fresh from selling 30 hotels in the UK to Land Securities Trillium for €711 million (a deal which completed this week), Accor is to sell 91 hotels – 72 in Germany and 19 in the Netherlands – to Moor Park Real Estate for €863 million. Accor will operate the hotels, which have the Novotel, Mercure, Ibis and Etap brands and a total of 12,000 rooms, under 12-year variable-rent leases for a maximum of 84 years. Moor Park, which owns a chain of more than 70 shops in Germany, will renovate its new purchases using the €43 million included in the transaction price. The deal will allow Accor to work in partnership with Moor Park to extend Accor’s presence in Germany and the Netherlands. |
| Scandic Hotels Sold To EQT | Return to Headlines |
| Hilton Hotels Corporation (HHC) announced last August its plans to sell either all or part of the Scandic Hotels chain. HHC ultimately selected option 1 and EQT responded. The private equity firm is to pay around €833 million for the portfolio in a deal that is expected to complete next month. Scandic Hotels operates 132 mid-market hotels in Scandinavia; of these, 128 have the Scandic brand and three the Hilton brand. | |
| Majority Stake In Occidental Hoteles Reported Sold | Return to Headlines |
| Reports in the Spanish press note that Valanza, the private equity arm of the bank BBVA, and Pontegadea, the investment vehicle of businessman Amancio Ortega, have agreed to take between them a stake of 76.58% in Spanish chain Occidental Hoteles. The deal, which sees private equity firm Mercapital and savings bank La Caixa, the main shareholders, each dispose of a stake of 30.5%, is valued at a reported €434 million. The hotel company’s management team holds the remaining shares. | |
| Coyle Springs For Three Gresham Hotels | Return to Headlines |
| Gresham Hotel Group has sold three of its four-star hotels in continental Europe to a consortium of private investors headed by its own chief executive Patrick Coyle. The consortium, which had the backing of AIB Corporate Finance, is thought to have paid between €50 million and €55 million for the 135-room Gresham Belson, in Brussels; the 90-room Gresham Carat, in Hamburg; and the 74-room Gresham Memphis, in Amsterdam. The sale affects neither Mr Coyle’s position as chief executive nor the hotels’ branding. The three properties will though be treated to refurbishment work. | |
| Double The W | Return to Headlines |
| The first W hotel in eastern Europe is to be the W St Petersburg, in Russia. Starwood Hotels & Resorts has signed a management agreement on the property with local firm Real Estate Development. Sberbank, a Russian bank, will finance the development of the hotel, which is set to open on Voznesensky Prospect in mid 2008 with around 135 rooms. The W brand is to appear too in the Italian city of Milan. Starwood is to work with Gruppo Statuto on the redevelopment of a building in the Brera district of the city. The 76-room W Milan is due to open in December 2008. | |
| Starwood: Aloft In Brussels And Airborne In Milan | Return to Headlines |
| In 2005 Starwood Hotels & Resorts took the DNA of the W brand and used it to create a new lifestyle brand named Aloft. The first six Aloft hotels in the series of 500 that Starwood wants to have worldwide by 2012 have been promised to the USA, Canada and China. Now, though, it is Europe’s turn to join the feast. Starwood has signed a 20-year management agreement on a 150-room hotel in the Belgian capital Brussels. The hotel, which is set to open in September 2009, forms part of Leopold Village, a mixed-use scheme that will be developed by the Irish firm Thornsett Group. It might be said that DEC, the Italian construction firm, has the Starwood gene in its blood; the firm would have inherited it from its mother company Degennaro Group, which holds the franchise on three of Starwood’s hotels in Italy. DEC has signed a management agreement with Starwood for the Sheraton Malpensa Airport Hotel, which DEC is to build adjacent to Terminal 1 of Malpensa airport in Milan. The 450-room hotel, which will resemble an aeroplane in its shape, is scheduled to open in January 2010. | |
| Jolie Adopts A New Brand In Africa | Return to Headlines |
| A marketing and technical operational assistance agreement that exists between Jolie Ville Hotels Management and Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts expires at the end of this year and will not be renewed. As a result, the Mövenpick name will disappear at three five-star hotels in Egypt: the 418-room Jolie Ville Golf & Resort Sharm El Sheikh, the 396-room Jolie Ville Resort & Casino Sharm El Sheikh and the 332-room Jolie Ville Luxor Resort. The gap in the nameplates left by the departure of Mövenpick will be filled from 1 January 2008 by the word Maritim, after German chain Maritim Hotels signed a contract with Egyptian investment firm HKS Group, the owner of the three hotels managed by Jolie Ville. | |
| Walk This Way: DMC Welcomes Second Radisson SAS Tower | Return to Headlines |
| Imagine the press in Dubai Media City (DMC): the press of people on the bridge at the Radisson SAS Hotel, Dubai Media City all eager to sample the delights in the hotel’s second tower, which has now opened. The bridge links that tower, which contains 125 guest rooms, to the first, which has had its 121 rooms in operation since January. The eager press in the French city of Bordeaux will be the one squeezing the grapes in readiness to make the odd bottle or two of claret to toast the arrival this summer of the 150-room Radisson SAS Grand Hotel. | |
| On The Scent Of An Art'otel | Return to Headlines |
| Park Plaza Hotels Europe (PPHE) revealed last November as it unveiled art’otel properties in Berlin and Potsdam that Cologne was among the German cities next in line for a visit. True to its word PPHE has announced that the sixth art’otel in Germany will indeed be heading for the western city, timing its arrival for 2008. The construction of the €45 million 210-room hotel is set to begin in autumn 2007. The dedicated hotel resident always on the lookout for a fresh experience might offer up the following prayer: if I must fall ill, please let it be in Lübeck in 2009. That is the year when Maritim Hotels will be opening a hotel specifically for hospital patients. The 120-room, upper three-star property, which will absorb an investment of €19.5 million, is to be built in the grounds of University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein. | |
| All Seasons Brand To Come To Europe | Return to Headlines |
| Accor is determined to make the All Seasons brand as familiar to Europeans as it is to those who dwell in the Asia-Pacific region. The three-star brand, worn by hotels in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Bali, will make its European debut in France this autumn before spreading into cities elsewhere on the continent in 2008. Accor will offer franchises or will rebrand hotels it owns, as it seeks to have 10,000 rooms in operation by 2010. The company sees All Seasons as a complement to the Ibis brand. | |
| Shiver Runs Through The Mailbox | Return to Headlines |
| Shiver, a newly formed private investment firm, has paid a reported £10.35 million for a 50% stake in the 90-room Ramada Hotel Birmingham City Centre. The stake in the property, which stands at The Mailbox development in England’s second city, was held by Premier VCT (Mailbox), a joint venture between Close Brothers Venture Capital Trust (CBVCT) and Healthcare and Leisure Property Fund. CBVCT made around £3.68 million from the sale of its 43% holding in the joint venture and it will also receive £4 million in repaid loan stock. Meanwhile, in the northwest of England, Wilkinson Corporation has submitted plans for the transformation of a Grade II listed mansion in Buile Hill Park, Salford, into an 80-room, four-star hotel. The building was the home until 2000 of the Lancashire Mining Museum. | |
| Accor Releases Its Full-Year Figures | Return to Headlines |
| In January Accor forecast pre-tax operating profit for the full-year 2006 of €700 million to €720 million. So the company must have been delighted with an actual amount of €727 million, a like-for-like increase of 28.7% on the previous year’s figure. Full-year revenue, first reported in January, was €7.6 billion, a like-for-like increase of 6.7% (the strongest growth since 1998). RevPAR for the first two months of 2007 was up 13.2% across the company’s upscale and mid-scale European hotels and up 8.4% among their counterparts in the economy sector: a sector added to by the opening of the first Etap hotel in Wales, a 157-room property in the capital Cardiff. | |
| HVS London Publishes The HVI And The European Transactions Article | Return to Headlines |
| This week saw the publication of the latest editions of two of HVS London’s most respected annual reports: the Hotel Valuation Index (HVI), a review of hotel value trends in Europe, and European Hotel Transactions, which analyses those transactions of single assets and portfolios that shaped 2006. Want to know which city in Europe is the most expensive in which to buy a hotel: the HVI’s your publication click here. Want to know why the hotel investment market headed “into orbit” last year? Then download European Hotel Transactions click here. Both reports may be downloaded free of charge. The press release for the HVI click here and the European Hotel Transactions click here are also available for download. | |
Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 01/03/07-08/03/07
InterContinental Hotels Group - HSBC initiated its coverage with an 'Overweight' rating and a target price of 1,455p.
Millennium & Copthorne - Market rumour suggested that the company was poised to expand its presence in the Far East with a deal that would increase revenues significantly.
Kingdom Hotel Investments - The company warned that its earnings for the full-year 2006 would be lower than anticipated.
