Hotel News Now each week features a news roundup from a different region of the world. This week’s compilation covers Europe.

Tristan Capital Partners has acquired a majority stake in Raag Hotels, which owns “budget boutique” brand Point A Hotels, to the tune of 420 million pounds sterling [$546 million]. The brand has 10 properties, seven of which are in London across Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow, writes Hotel News Now’s Terence Baker.

Tristan Capital said it plans to grow the portfolio by two to three hotels a year, first in the United Kingdom and Ireland and then potentially expanding across Europe, and up to 3,000 keys in the medium term. The management company of the assets, Queensway, is to continue managing them and have a minority stake in the overall company.

For an undisclosed price, private-equity firm KSL Capital Partners has acquired The Pig Hotels Group, a country-house group of hotels in the south of England, writes HNN’s Baker, who added the brand intends to grow organically.

The hotel brand’s founder Robin Hutson, CEO and chairman of parent group Home Grown Hotels, is to remain as chairman and a stakeholder. Hutson also founded Lime Wood Group, which owns and manages hotels Lime Wood and Portetta, a seasonal mountain resort in Courchevel, France.

Travelodge U.K. is to reposition most of its hotels and all new builds as “budget-luxe,” a move that follows a survey of more than 5,000 of its customers who said they wanted to see more “style, choice and little homely touches to make it easier to work, rest and relax both inside and outside of the room.”

The change kicks off with 60 hotels before the end of the year, executives said. The brand, the U.K.’s second largest after Premier Inn, has more than 550 hotels across the country, with others in Ireland and Spain for a total asset portfolio of 593.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine rumbles on, Ukrainian hoteliers have stepped up the pressure for their Western counterparts to exit any Russian interests.

Ivan Loun, international relations officer at the Ukrainian Hotel & Resort Association, the country’s national hotel-membership organization, said “I am in this industry, and I understand I am biting the hand that feeds me, but hotels operating from this flow of money — and we cannot check each hotel — end up with wealthy Russians who cannot be hiding their political and economic position from the ruling Russian party.”

The UHRA has sent letters pleading its case to Jens Zimmer Christensen, president of Europe’s principal hotel and hospitality organization HOTREC, and Zurab Pololikashvili, secretary general of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, writes HNN’s Baker.

After a couple of years in which U.K. value-added taxes on hotels and hospitality was dropped to 12.5% as revenue dipped due to the pandemic, things are back where they started, at 20%, with UKHospitality warning this additional cost will be harmful to consumers in a period of high inflation.

The membership organization’s CEO Kate Nicholls said hotels will fail as a result, with one in three “having less than a month of cash reserves and most … carrying heavy debt burdens. This can only cause the U.K.’s wider economic recovery to falter.”

As a conversion of the independent Benilux Park Hotel, the 186-room Mercure Benidorm will be Benidorm's first non-Spanish branded hotel in coastal market when it opens this June, writes HNN’s Baker.

According to Statista, a Spanish data and statistics firm, more than 11 million roomnights were purchased in the city in 2019, 76.3% of them deriving from the United Kingdom.

Ivar Yuste, partner at PHG Hotels & Resorts, said “classic mass-market resort destinations such as Magaluf, Benidorm, Torremolinos, Lloret de Mar and Salou are in my top list of resort destinations with the highest turnaround potential,” referring to the popularity with investors of hoteliers of conversions.

Steigenberger Hotels AG has announced Oliver Bonke as its new CEO and Wilhelm Bender as its new chairman.

Bonke, with more than 30 years’ experience in the hospitality industry, has worked for IHG Hotels & Resorts, Loews Hotels & Co., Shangri-La Group and Starwood Hotels, among other firms, while Bender’s experience has included 17 years as chairman of airport operator Fraport AG.

• Valor Hospitality will manage the new-build, 35-room Dunluce Lodge in Portrush, Northern Ireland, which overlooks Royal Portrush Golf Club.
• Accor division Ennismore and ActivumSG Capital Management have agreed a long-term management agreement to open the first SLS-branded property in Europe, a 490-room hotel in Barcelona by the end of 2024.
  
• In early March, Swiss investment firm Aevis Victoria SA bought the 39-room L’Oscar in London’s Holborn district for 60 million pounds sterling [$78.2 million] or approximately 1.54 million pounds sterling [$2 million] per key. The management company is Michel Reybier Hospitality.
  
• Bespoke Hotels is to open its second Hotel Brooklyn, following the debut in Manchester, with the June opening of the 191-room Hotel Brooklyn Leicester in Leicester, U.K.
  
• The family office of the founders of the Naf Naf clothing brand, Pariente, via its Maisons Pariente hotel brand, is to open its fourth hotel in France and first in Paris with the October opening of 61-room Le Grand Mazarin.
• Scandic Hotels on April 5 opened the 231-room Scandic Kiruna, which is the first hotel to open in this northern Swedish city’s new city center.
  
• Cycas Hospitality has opened its second dual-branded hotel in France, which also happens to be Marriott International’s first, the property at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport consisting of a 229-key Courtyard by Marriott and a 106-key Residence Inn by Marriott. This also is the first Residence in Paris;
  

• On April 11, Radisson Hotel Group also opened a dual-branded hotel in Oslo, with the 300-room Radisson Hotel & Conference Center Oslo Airport and 214-room Radisson Red Oslo Airport.

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