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

According to STR, CoStar’s hotel analytics firm, Europe is expected to see an all-time high of hotel openings in 2021, with more than 100,00 rooms estimated for the year. Analysts said more than 50,000 rooms have opened thus far in 2021, which is already more than in all of 2020. That growth reflects delayed 2020 openings and limited cancellations of planned projects to date despite the ongoing pandemic.

And on and it might go, with data suggesting things are not likely to slow in 2022, when another 100,000 rooms are anticipated to open. The previous peak for new openings was in 2019, with 74,852 rooms.

European hotel industry events returned in early September with Berlin hosting the International Hotel Investment Forum. One of the keynote speakers was Accor’s chairman and CEO Sébastien Bazin, who said that while conversions have helped owners survive COVID-19-related business challenges, the overall industry will be lost at sea if individualism were to perish.

“Yes, conversions are fueling the engine," Bazin said. "Independent owners got a great deal of help, which has masked the economic reality. ... Allow them to remain independent. We need independent businesses as without them it is harder for a place to retain its differences and characteristics. I have told my teams not to be vultures."

Bazin said that some markets in Europe, such as Italy, could remain very fragmented in terms of hotel brand affiliation as they have been for hundreds of years, and he added they could be better off for it.

For more comments from Bazin and other news, panels and asides from IHIF 2021, please click here.

The Londoner, owned by Edwardian Hotels, opened on Sept. 6 in a huge boost to owners and hoteliers still putting faith in the United Kingdom capital and in large amounts of event space. The property is the most ambitious, costly and notable hotel to debut in Central London in the last 25 years.

The Londoner, located in the southwest corner of Leicester Square in the heart of London’s West End, was first conceived in 2007. It has gone through two major crises in the Great Financial Crisis and COVID-19 and originally had expansion plans to build 16 floors, but developers then had to revise their plans and sink the hotel eight floors down. Like most hotels in the industry, The Londoner has also experienced all manner of staffing and cost challenges. It also has benefited from a 175-million pounds sterling debt facility from HSBC, the first for the U.K.’s hotel industry connected to the bank’s Green Revolving Credit Facility launched in July 2019.

Hotel firms continue to announce new brands, some formulated to help owners keep their assets’ identity while simultaneously allowing their operations to benefit from strengthened hotel firm distribution, procurement and back-of-house efficiencies.

In the last month, IHG Hotels & Resorts launched Vignette Collection, which will debut with hotels in Australia and Thailand. Accor announced Emblems, its 42nd brand. Deutsche Hospitality drummed up one of its own, House of Beats, which will debut in Hamburg and Milan.

A union for Spanish housekeepers — Las Kellys — will launch a booking app that will highlight working conditions at hotels, so that guests can make suitable booking decisions. The app developers have raised more than 60,000 euros ($70,091) in a crowdfunding campaign that continues.

A spokesperson for the initiative said “[Las Kellys wants] to usher in a new era of tourism where people’s working conditions and their humanity are above economic interests,” adding that the decision to build the app followed unsuccessful efforts to have existing booking platforms like Booking.com and TripAdvisor include such criteria.

• The 183-room The Corner London City, formerly the Qbic London City, has reopened following a refurbishment by its new operators RBH Hospitality.
  
• Pan Pacific Hotels Group opened its first European property, the 237-room Pan Pacific London.
  
• Starwood Capital has bought the 399-room Hotel Vesterbro from Strawberry Hospitality Group for 609 million Danish krone ($95.7 million) in a sale-and-leaseback deal. Nordic Choice Hotels, part of Strawberry, will continue to operate the property.
  
• Accor has signed three hotels in the U.K.: the 149-room Mercure Bredbury Hall Hotel in Leeds, due to open by the end of the year in collaboration with owner Vine Hotels; the 60-room Mercure Dumfries in Dumfries, Scotland, to open in the first half of 2022 in partnership with Splendid Hospitality Group; and 125-room Ibis Styles Romford in East London, set to open by the end of next year in partnership with Romford South Ltd..
  

• Red Carnation Hotels will debut in Scotland with the 100 Princess Street, which has some of its 30 rooms overlooking Edinburgh Castle. The property will open in April 2022.

Compiled by Terence Baker.

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