Featured in this EMEA Hospitality Newsletter - Week Ending 25 May 2007
Treble The Travelodge
Twins Identifiable By Their InterContinental Brand
Renaissance And Rebirth In Paris
IHG And Rezidor Both Step Behind The Urals
Emaar To Bring The Dead Sea To Life
Oman, It's Mövenpick And IHG
Kingsgate On A High In Holborn
Radisson Edwardian Heads For Aberdeen
Glorious Sums Of Yorkshire
Hilton Has Hart Up Its Sleeve
Help Find Madeleine McCann


Treble The Travelodge
Travelodge’s 2020 vision is to have a 10% share of the total UK hotel market in 13 years’ time. And how will the budget chain reach its cherished goal? Well, by investing £3.5 billion in a programme designed to add around 40 hotels (some 4,000 rooms) to its portfolio each year from 2008 onwards, so that by the time the bell rings to call time on the project in 2020 Travelodge should have trebled its current stock. Two-thirds of the hotels will be newly built and Greater London will be the focus of much of the activity.

Twins Identifiable By Their InterContinental Brand Return to Headlines
If European cities were twinned on the basis of their lack of an InterContinental hotel, then Oporto in northwest Portugal and Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, would be prime candidates for the process. Twins can be identical, and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is working to ensure this is so by giving each city an InterContinental hotel. In Portugal, a country yet to see the InterContinental brand, IHG has teamed up with the appositely named real estate firm Solitaire to turn an eighteenth-century building into the 109-room InterContinental Porto Palacio Das Cardosas, which is set to open in late 2009. A few months after that and Belgrade will be opening its hotel, a property of 325 rooms forming part of a mixed-use scheme that will be developed by Serbian firm Delta Holdings.

Renaissance And Rebirth In Paris Return to Headlines
Paris in the spring finds Marriott International full of seasonal vigour. The company has announced that its eighth hotel in the metropolitan area of the French capital is to be the 118-room Renaissance Paris Arc de Triomphe, which will open in 2009. Marriott signed the management agreement with Empire SAS, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French group Altarea. One of Marriott International’s seven existing properties in the city was until the start of this week known as the Rive Gauche Saint-Jacques Hotel & Conference Center. Now, fully refurbished, the 757-room property has changed its name once more: this time to the Paris Marriott Rive Gauche Hotel & Conference Center. Accor sold what was the 782-room Sofitel Paris Forum Rive Gauche Hotel to Marriott International for an undisclosed sum in March 2006.

IHG And Rezidor Both Step Behind The Urals Return to Headlines
Take a peek behind the Ural Mountains in Russia and you will see InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) and Rezidor Hotel Group each clutching a contract in its gloved hand. IHG holds a 20-year franchise agreement with the signature of Stroytek upon it that covers the 160-room Holiday Inn Chelyabinsk-Riverside, which is due to open in the city of Chelyabinsk early next year. Rezidor’s piece of paper guarantees that the town of Tyumen, to the northeast of Chelyabinsk, will, like its neighbouring metropolis, see its first internationally branded hotel. The Radisson Hotel Tyumen, which will have at least 200 rooms, is set to open before the end of 2009.

Emaar To Bring The Dead Sea To Life Return to Headlines
The dish that Emaar Properties set before the king (Abdullah II of Jordan) this week was a scale model of the Samarah Dead Sea Golf & Beach Resort. The US$500 million mixed-use development, which features a collection of luxury apartments and villas, will be created on the banks of the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea by The Dead Sea Touristic and Real Estate Investment Company, which has been formed by Emaar in collaboration with regional investors.

Oman, It's Mövenpick And IHG Return to Headlines
Picture Orascom Hotels & Developments’ project in El Gouna, Egypt, and you will have an idea of what Orascom’s leisure complex in Salālah, on the coast of Oman, might look like by the time it is finished in 2010. One of the hotels on the 9.5 million m² development will be managed by Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts. The 400-room, five-star Mövenpick Resort & Spa Salālah is set to open in 2009. Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts may be new to Oman, but InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is a familiar face in the sultanate. IHG has signed a contract with Samco Trading & Contracting to build the country’s third Crowne Plaza hotel. The new addition, which will have 126 rooms, will perch on a hilltop above the coastal city of Suhar and is expected to open by the end of this year.

Kingsgate On A High In Holborn Return to Headlines
Kingsgate London Properties may be starting its hotel career in London but it is looking at Europe as a whole in its quest to have as many as 15 hotels in its portfolio in five years’ time. That first hotel will occupy a derelict Grade II listed building in the Holborn district of central London and it will have 65 rooms and a five-star rating. The reconstruction work is scheduled to start by the end of 2007 and to take around a year to complete.

Radisson Edwardian Heads For Aberdeen Return to Headlines
Reports indicate that Radisson Edwardian Hotels’ first property in Scotland will be built at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre in the northeastern city of Aberdeen. The four-star hotel of 222 rooms should be ready in 2009. Aberdeen is known as the ‘granite city’, and the stonework of local firm Bancon Developments’ proposed new hotel will reinforce the epithet. The company is expected to submit plans for a 100-room hotel costing a reported £5 million that will be built on the site of a former bowling alley. Depending on the progress of planning permission, the hotel could be open as soon as autumn 2008.

Glorious Sums Of Yorkshire Return to Headlines
Shiva Hotels has paid Leisurepoint close to a reported £13 million for the 99-room Best Western Monkbar Hotel. The property in the English city of York has permission in place to extend by 25 rooms. Another deal with a reported seven-figure price tag was clinched elsewhere in North Yorkshire: Black Swan (Yorkshire) acquired the Macdonald Black Swan Hotel from Macdonald Hotels and Resorts. The 45-room property in the town of Helmsley is set for renovation. The hotel is a second in the town for Simon Rhatigan, who also owns the 24-room Feversham Arms Hotel.

Hilton Has Hart Up Its Sleeve Return to Headlines
Hilton Hotels Corporation (HHC) announced in January that Stephen Bollenbach, its chief executive, would be stepping down at the end of 2007. The company said at the time that it expected to have named his successor by this summer, and here is that name: Matthew Hart, currently HHC’s president and chief operating officer. Mr Hart will retain his president’s badge when he steps into the chief executive’s office on 1 January 2008. Bollenbach will stay on as co-chairman of HHC.

Help Find Madeleine McCann Return to Headlines

This is Madeleine McCann. The four-year-old British girl was abducted on 3 May 2007 while on holiday with her family in the resort of Praia da Luz on the Algarve in Portugal. The website www.bringmadeleinehome.com click here has more information for those wishing to help in the search for her.

Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 17/05/07-24/05/07




InterContinental Hotels Group - The share price fell back from the previous week's highs on profit taking.

Accor - The company said last week that it was not planning any major acquisitions.

Millennium & Copthorne - The share price returned the gains of the previous week which had arisen from the takeover speculation surrounding InterContinental Hotels Group.