It's been a busy year in 2024 for single-hotel sales and portfolio mergers-and-acquisitions activity, even if there has not been one single deal that has turned the European hotel industry on its head.
Overall, the pace of hospitality transactions picked up throughout Europe in 2024 as investors put their capital to work.
In this month-by-month recap — perfect reading for pre- and post-New Year’s Day festivities — Hotel News Now showcases the transactions and European and international ownership and capital that continues to shape the Europe’s hotel industry.
January
The Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer decided after 161 years that it would expand out of its native Monaco and acquire the 78-room Le Palace des Neiges in Courchevel 1850, a luxury ski village in the French Alps in eastern France. No price was announced for the hotel. The Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer as founded in 1863 and is now part of Paris-based lifestyle firm LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
Next, Gruppo Statuto acquired the 135-room Mandarin Oriental, Paris for €205 million ($216 million), or more than €1.5 million per room. For many, Italy was top of the list for acquisitions in 2024, with many family offices electing to end ownership that has spanned multiple generations. Branded hotel firms are traveling to it, too, in the hopes of conversion deals.
Starwood Capital Group joined the New Year’s party by acquiring 10 London Radisson Blu hotels from Edwardian Hotels, which has kept only three hotels, the 404-room The May Fair and the 350-room The Londoner in London and the 263-room Edwardian Manchester. Before the sale, Edwardian’s had 13 hotels and more than 3,000 rooms, with 2,053 hotel rooms included in the Starwood deal. No price tag was announced. Indeed, it was one of London and the United Kingdom’s largest owner-operators, along with Clermont Hotel Group, formerly GLH Hotels, which owns brands such as Thistle Hotels and the former Guoman brand, now Clermont Hotels.
On Feb. 19, Madrid-based hotel owner GMA Corporate, via its publicly listed real estate investment trust, Atom Hoteles Socimi S.A., acquired two luxury hotels in Barcelona for €50 million. The acquisition of the 75-room Hotel Miramar Barcelona and the 70-room Gran Hotel La Florida boosts Atom’s hotel portfolio to 30 hotels and 6,858 rooms.
February
February began with the news that Travel + Leisure Co. acquired French hotel firm Accor’s Accor Vacation Club for $48.4 million. The deal was completed in early March, with all the hotels included in the club located in the Asia-Pacific region.
Then, German real estate management firm Deka Immobilien acquired the 173-room Ruby Zoe Hotel & Bar in London’s Notting Hill district for €62 million, or €358,381 per key.
U.S. owner-operator MCR Hotels made headlines in London when it spent £275 million ($290 million) to acquire BT Tower, one of the U.K. capital’s most instantly recognizable edifices. The skyscraper has never been a hotel before, and expectations are high for its debut just off Oxford Street.
French owner-operator Covivio now owns all its Covivio Hotels brand following a deal for the final 8.3% of shares from Italian insurance firm Assicurazioni Generali. The brand, which has 313 hotels in 12 countries, has a value of €6.4 billion if the sum can be extrapolated from the deal with AG that, according to Covivio, involved the “acquisition of €500 million of assets and a capital increase of nearly €300 million.”
Later in February, Sun Venture announced its debut in London with the acquisition of the 280-room Hyatt Place London City East. Cycas Hospitality will continue to manage the hotel.
On Feb. 29, Travelodge UK finalized the acquisition of 66 hotels for £210 million ($266 million) from London-based real estate investment trust LXi REIT. The real estate investment trust has clashed with Travelodge during the latter’s business reorganization, or company voluntary arrangement, but remains Travelodge's largest landlord.
March
March started with a large single-asset transaction that reinforced Italy as the principal destination in Europe in 2024 for both investors and brands looking to increase market share. ANIMA Group, a publicly listed asset-management firm, acquired Grand Hotel Poltu Quatu, a mixed-use property in Sardinia for €70 million from family office Pulcini Group. The development has a 139-room hotel that will be branded under Marriott International's W Hotels flag.
The first European hotel industry merger of note for the year occurred when Slovak firm BHP acquired 50% of the portfolio of Luxembourg-based CPI Hotels’ portfolio. The joint venture has eight hotels, all in the Czech Republic and managed by CPI subsidiary CPI Hotels.
April
Kicking off April, London-based private equity firm Proprium sold its 35% stake in Motel One Group to majority partner One Hotels & Resorts GmbH, for €1.25 billion. One Hotels & Resorts founded Motel One Group. Proprium was a partner in the brand for 17 years and initially acquired its stake in 2007 for €65 million.
May
May started with a huge deal that shook the European hotel sector. Los Angeles-based investment firm Ares Management Corp. paid £400 million for the 21-hotel Landsec portfolio. Every hotel in the exchange has a long-term lease with AccorInvest, the investment, ownership and operations spinoff of French hotel company Accor. AccorInvest said it would transfer all operations to Ares.
Hospitality deals involving single assets continued to post high pricing. One notable example was Singapore-based Copthorne Hotel Holdings' acquisition of the 268-room Hilton Paris Opéra for €240 million, or €895,522 per room. CDL bought the property for an undisclosed price from Blackstone, which itself bought the hotel in 2006 for £68.6 million from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida-based Westbrook Partners.
June
In June, ownership companies Partners Swiss Life and Amundi along with hotel operator B&B Hotels acquired 23 hotels from publicly listed Eurazeo Real Estate for approximately €35 million. All the hotels are in France and were part of Eurazeo division Grape Hospitality, of which Eurazeo owns 70%.
In mid-June, Israeli hotel firm Fattal Hotel Group acquired Dutch hotel brand Zien Group from owners KSL Capital Partners and Garden Capital Group. No price was announced for the brand that has 12 hotel and 1,522 rooms. KSL bought the portfolio in 2021.
Singaporean private equity firm Prima Asset Management acquired the 68-room Victoria Garden Hotel, Paddington, which it plans to renovate and reposition as a boutique hotel with a value of more than $70 million.
Accor’s lifestyle hotel division Ennismore invested in sustainability- and luxury-focused brand Our Habitas, yet another brand in the French firm’s portfolio. Meanwhile, AccorInvest announced an agreement with fellow French REIT Covivio to swap more than 50 economy and midscale hotels valued at €393 million.
July
Room Mate Hotels, the Madrid-based division of Room Mate Hospitality Holdings, acquired brand Staying Valencia, which has 10 hotels all located in the Spanish city Valencia.
Mergers-and-acquisitions activity continued with Berlin-based NUMA Group snapping up U.K. aparthotels brand Native Places. The price was not disclosed, but U.K. newspaper The Times said it believed the deal was valued at €25 million.
Lastly, Paris-based Extendam and 123 IM sold three Accor-branded hotels in Germany to its partner and co-investor SomnOO. No price was noted for the three hotels — the 142-room Mercure Hotel Hamm, 146-room Mercure Hotel Hagen and 170-room Mercure Hotel Luedenscheid.
August
Athens-based Premia Properties Real Estate Investment Company acquired two hotels in Greece for €112.5 million from Stockholm-based operator and package-vacation firm Nordic Leisure Travel Group. The two hotels in question are the 534-room Sunwing Kallithea Beach on Rhodes; and 100% of Helios Palace S.A., which includes the 262-room Sunwing Makrigialos & Ocean Beach Club on Crete. Nordic Leisure Travel Group owned and operated the Rhodes asset for 50 years and the Crete asset for 40 years.
September
Madrid-based Dorsa Holding Group and boutique hotel and hostels operator Room00 Group acquired 100% of the shares of TOC Hostels from owners Ignacio Catalán and Salvador Torrens for approximately €20 million. The deal makes Room00 the largest hostel chain in Europe, with 30 assets and 1,360 rooms in operation and with 20 hotels and 900 rooms in the pipeline.
In a surprising sale, the State Property Fund of Ukraine sold the 361-room Hotel Ukraina, which it has owned since 1961, for 2.5 billion Ukrainian hryvnia ($60.4 million). The buyer was private Ukrainian entrepreneur Maksym Krippa, whose winning bid was twice the starting price for the hotel that had been set at 1.05 billion Ukrainian hryvnia. The Kyiv Independent newspaper stated that Krippa has “maintained a relatively low profile throughout his career — built largely on gambling, entertainment and IT” and the Hotel Ukraina “is heavily under-booked due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and over $1 million in debt.”
In mid-September, BC Partners Real Estate and Hova Hospitality acquired 30 German hotels and 2,308 rooms held by AccorInvest. The portfolio will now be affiliated with brand B&B Hotels via long-term, consumer price index-linked leases.
October
Frankfurt-based hotel investment firm Alchemy Step Hotel Group acquired Ghent, Belgium-based FLI Group and its eight hotels previously owned by Hamilton Hotel Partners for an undisclosed price.
At the end of October, Premier Inn owner Whitbread sold two hotels for £56 million in a double sale-and-leaseback deal. The two properties included are the 90-room Premier Inn Oxford Westgate and 137-room Hub by Premier Inn London Westminster St. James’ Park in Central London.
November
In early November, Irish hotel firm Dalata Hotel Group acquired the 229-room Radisson Blu Dublin Airport for €83 million from CG Hotels Dublin Airport Ltd. The deal for the leased hotel is due to close in the first half of next year. Expect Dalata to be active in 2025 as it expands further into Ireland and the U.K. and out into mainland Europe.
New York City-based KKR & Company and Boston-based Baupost Group were involved in the first of two very hefty deals. The partnership acquired a 33-hotel portfolio from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority for £900 million ($1.14 billion), the first $1-billion-plus deal in Europe of the year. All the properties are from within Marriott International brands and include the 311-room London Marriott Hotel Regent’s Park and 206-room London Marriott Hotel County Hall.
The second of those deals was Mohari Hospitality’s acquisition of Venice’s famed 191-room Bauer Hotel for a reported €300 million or €1.57 million per room. The hotel is undergoing renovations before opening in 2025 as a Rosewood Hotels & Resorts’ property. The Bauer hotel was owned by King Street Capital, which in April bought it from Signa, the Austrian investment firm currently in insolvency. The hotel There also was one accepted bid in 2024 that then rejected by creditors.
Oaktree Capital Management, Partners Group and Trinity Investments acquired the 266-room The Standard, London, for approximately £185 million from Crosstree Real Estate Partners. According to data from CoStar, the hotel had a value of £60 million in 2015 when the property was last sold. The hotel itself opened as The Standard in 2019.
At the end of the month, Swiss investment firm Partners Group acquired a majority stake in Palma de Mallorca-based hotel firm Bluesea Hotels, which owns 29 resorts in Spain’s Balearic Islands and Canary Islands. The financial details of the deal were not provided. Partners said closed the deal via a “partnership with Portobello Capital, a leading independent mid-market private equity firm.”
December
In early December, the owners of Quinta do Lago, the large leisure, residential and golf course resort in Faro, Portugal, acquired the resort’s 144-room Conrad Algarve for an undisclosed price. The deal appeared to be an accounting exercise on the fund managed by ECS, owned by New York City-based Davidson Kempner Capital Management, which along with Irish entrepreneur Denis O’Brien owns Quinta do Lago.
On Dec. 10, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Geneva-based investment firm Anaïs Ventures acquired a minority stake in the 11-hotel luxury boutique brand Les Domaines de Fontenille. Its hotels are mostly in France and mostly in the Mediterranean. This is LVMH's latest foray into the hotel industry as it also owns Belmond hotel group.