Hotel News Now each week features a news roundup from a different region of the world. This week’s compilation covers Europe.
Accor makes big strides in Poland’s Orbis sale
French hotel firm Accor announced on 12 June that it has agreed with Polish hotel firm Orbis’ key terms taking over Orbis’ services business for 1.2 billion Polish zlotys ($320.6 million) and selling off its real estate assets. Accor owns an 85.8% stake in Orbis.
Orbis recently decided to separate its hotel services and real-estate ownership, as did Accor with its own HotelServices and HotelInvest businesses, with the first 55% of its HotelInvest division sold in February 2018. Accor will take over franchise and management agreements on Orbis’ 136 assets, all of which are in Central Europe.
Liverpool 2, Spurs 0; Madrid Hotels 50
The UEFA Champions League final on 1 June in Madrid proved to be a real winner for the Spanish capital when the two teams who made it to the final game both came from soccer-loving England. Rates were reported as being as high as €6,000 ($6,792), but the ADR recorded for that Saturday night still came in at an eye-popping €560.41 ($629.99), a 404% year-over-year increase compared with the same weekend day in 2018, writes Hotel News Now’s Terence Baker.
The game finished with Liverpool beating London’s Tottenham Hotspur 2-0. Ivar Yuste, managing partner at Madid-based business consultancy PHG Hotels & Resorts, said “Madrid hotels all experienced record ADR and occupancy for the match. … I have not spoken to anybody that didn’t say they were sold out for that day.”
Reinvention needed as Barcelona regains ADR, guests
Despite Catalan calls for independence from Spain, and the Barcelona government—re-elected in May—retaining its moratorium on new builds and renovations to hotels, Barcelona remains very much in investors’ wish lists, so much so that there is a real problem the scarcity of product, according to Hotel News Now’s Terence Baker.
New hotels signed or ready to open include assets from Nobu (a conversion) and Hard Rock Hotels, but increasingly new hotels are in areas outside of the moratorium, with hoteliers such as Pau Guardans i Cambó, chair of tourism and hospitality organization Barcelona Global and owner of Único Hotels, saying that new districts need to be developed as well as the stories and demand drivers to go with them.
“It is not a question of raising ADR. Ten guests at a luxury hotel does not necessarily translate as quality tourism, but we have to encourage development in new areas that are not only budget hotels and hostels,” Guardans said.
Whitbread confident of long-term success as sales dip
Whitbread PLC, the parent firm of Premier Inn, posted a 4.6% year-over-year decline in United Kingdom like-for-like room sales. Executives on the earnings call said the company’s strategy of continued investment, seeking market share from independents, cutting costs and enjoying what executives called a buoyant leisure market bodes well for the long term, even if in the short term a drop in guest confidence might be worrying due to the company’s dependence on U.K. domestic trade, writes Terence Baker.
Company-wide, the firm’s underlying profit before tax increased 1.2% to £438 million ($551 million), which Nicholas Cadbury, group finance director, attributed to those stringent cost controls and efficiency programs. Premier Inn is expanding in Germany, but the vast majority of its portfolio is in the U.K., and with a large domestic guest list, it cannot enjoy the advantages that overseas visitors enjoy in regard to the weaker British pound sterling.
STR: Europe hotel performance for May 2019
Europe’s hotel industry reported positive year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during May 2019, according to data from STR, the parent company of Hotel News Now. In terms of Euro constant currency, May 2019 versus May 2018, occupancy in May rose 1.4% to 74.9%, average daily rate rose 2.9% to €116.38 ($132.33) and revenue per available room rose 4.3% to £87.22 ($99.173).
Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, did well in May, thanks to its hosting the Ice Hockey World Championships, which ran 10 May to 26 May. The semi-final and championship round games on the last two days of the tournament, which was won by Finland, produced double-digit year-on-year increases in each of the three key performance metrics. Occupancy increased 30.7% to 90.6%, ADR increased 210.7% to €195.25 ($222) and RevPAR increased 304.5% to €176.83 ($201.06).
Macdonald Hotels sells 27 assets for £300-plus
Scottish hotel chain Macdonald Hotels is in the process of selling 27 of its assets for a price of more than £300 million ($381 million), according to the U.K. newspaper The Times, which added that the buyer is American public-equity firm Centerbridge Partners.
The deal, The Times added, would extinguish Macdonald’s debt, which is supposedly approximately £190 million ($242 million), and would include its headquarters building in the Edinburgh suburb of Bathgate. Macdonald will retain 20 hotels, most of which are in the U.K. but also are in Spain.
Smura appointed to head Kempinski
Martin R. Smura has been appointed CEO of the Kempinski Group, arriving from his role as executive chairman of the Dorint Hotel Group. Smura also has experienced at Azimut Hotels, Adlon Holding and InterContinental Hotels Group, where he became the firm’s youngest regional GM at age 30.
Kempinski has a portfolio of 77 hotels and residences in 34 countries.
Deals and developments
- Radisson Hotel Group has opened the 160-room Radisson Blu Hotel, Prague, in the Czech capital. The asset is in an Art Nouveau building that formerly housed the Sheraton Prague Charles Square;
- Hyatt Hotels Corporation is to open its first Alila-branded resort in Switzerland, the 112-key Alila La Gruyère due to open in 2023. The deal is a management contract with Resort 4 SA, part of Ben Golf Investissements SA;
- Swedish owner-operator Pandox AB bought for €103 million ($117.3 million) three German hotels from Berlin-based peer company HR Group. The three properties are the 184-room Dorint Hotel an der Kongresshalle in Augsburg, 221-room Dorint Hotel an den Westfalenhallen, Dortmund, and 160-room Dorint Hotel am Dom in Erfurt. HR Group retains management under a 20-year revenue-based lease and 5.1% ownership;
- Boutique Les Manoirs des Portes de Deauville is due to open on 1 July just outside the English Channel seaside town of Deauville. The hotel dates to the 16th and 17th centuries;
- InterContinental Hotels Group opened on 4 June the 144-room InterContinental Lyon-Hotel Dieu in Lyon, France. The building was for more than 800 years the city’s hospital, up until 2010, and represents the largest private transformation of a historic monument in France.
Compiled by Terence Baker.