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Hyatt Hotels Corp. on Sunday announced it entered into a deal to purchase luxury resort-management services, travel and hospitality group Apple Leisure Group from affiliates of KKR and KSL Capital Partners for $2.7 billion in cash.

The deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021, will double Hyatt's global resorts footprint, opening the company to 11 new European markets. Apple Leisure Group's hotel portfolio comprises more than 33,000 rooms across 10 countries, according to a news release.

Apple Leisure is projected to have 102 resorts by the end of 2021. Its resort-brand division AMResorts manages several brands, including Breathless, Dreams, Secrets and Zoetry, which all sit within its AMR Collection portfolio. Hyatt itself has two all-inclusive resort brands: Hyatt Ziva and Hyatt Zilara.

“[Apple's] pipeline is a reflection of how they have been successful in moving their core brands forward," Hyatt President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian said. "Fifty percent of their pipeline is in construction, and some of that other percentage is in enhanced stages. Its pipeline is all fully signed and financed. There has been very little or no attrition in the pipeline in the last year."

Hong Kong's government is now upgrading 15 overseas destinations to "high risk" from "medium risk," including the United States, France and Spain, by Aug. 20, Reuters reports.

Those arriving from countries deemed high risk must quarantine for 21 days in a quarantine hotel, even if they are vaccinated.

"Despite large-scale vaccination programs, many places are also experiencing resurgence of the virus, which poses enormous challenges to our local anti-epidemic efforts," the Hong Kong government's statement said.

Jon Bortz, CEO and chairman of real estate investment trust Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, said in a video interview with Hotel News Now's Bryan Wroten that while business travel was close to zero at the height of the pandemic, it could take off after Labor Day. However, it's already starting at Pebblebrooks's hotels.

The hotel REIT's portfolio is in mostly urban markets and gateway cities in the U.S., which are highly dependent on business travel. Bortz said at the company's hotels, business travel is already at about 30% to 40% of what it was in 2019.

The U.S. General Services Administration announced it will freeze lodging rates at full-year 2021 levels in the lower continental Unites States and Washington, D.C., "to ensure the maximum lodging allowances for federal travelers are sufficient in FY 2022 as the lodging industry recovers," according to the GSA.

Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, released a statement saying, "Freezing per diem rates at pre-pandemic levels is vital to the hotel industry as we continue down the long and uneven road to recovery. We are grateful for GSA’s work to ensure reasonable per diem rates for FY22, and we look forward to welcoming back our government guests as travel resumes.”

A 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti over the weekend, the Associated Press reports. The country's Civil Protection Agency reported the earthquake has killed 1,297 people, injured another 5,700 and displaced thousands more.

"The quake centered about 125 kilometers (78 miles) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince nearly razed some towns and triggered landslides that hampered rescue efforts in a country that is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere," the article states. "It already was struggling with the worsening poverty, the coronavirus pandemic, the political uncertainty following the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and a wave of gang violence."

Abaka Bay Resort, a seaside resort on the island of Ile-a-Vache that was popular among Haitian officials, business leaders, diplomats and humanitarian workers, had nine of its 30 guestrooms destroyed by the quake, the AP reported in an earlier story. The Petit Pas Hotel in Les Cayes was also damaged.

"They disappeared — just like that," the owner of the Abaka Bay Resort told the news outlet.