Login

Europe's hospitality industry enjoyed a very busy year in 2024

Highlights from the year include newsworthy hotel deals and my own favorite travel experiences
Terence Baker (CoStar)
Terence Baker (CoStar)
Hotel News Now
December 23, 2024 | 1:29 P.M.

My goodness, another year done and gone.

On the penultimate day of the year, Hotel News Now will publish a rundown of the hotel transactions that made the news across Europe, and there were some notable deals. Three deals in particular stood out and showed investor and guest appetite for the grand cities of mainland Europe.

Italy’s Gruppo Statuto acquired the 135-room Mandarin Oriental, Paris, for €205 million ($216 million), more than €1.5 million per key. Singapore-based Copthorne Hotel Holdings acquired the 268-room Hilton Paris Opéra for €240 million, or €895,522 per room. Nicosia, Cyprus-based Mohari Hospitality acquired Venice’s 191-room Bauer Hotel for a reported sum of €300 million or €1.57 million per room.

It is usually at this point at the end of the year that I say I have never stayed in any of these hotels, but I have stayed at the Bauer. Its highlight is the breakfast and drinks patio overlooking the Grand Canal, where tables right by the edge are prized at breakfast.

That brings me to my travel and hospitality highlights of 2024.

My best hotel, not for the quality of the accommodation but for the location, must be the Okaukuejo Lodge in Etosha National Park, Namibia. The property has a combination of terraced rooms, bungalows and recreational vehicle camping pitches.

Few other places could one wake up, saunter over to a seat overlooking a waterhole and as dawn rose see elephant, rhinoceros, oryx, springbok, zebra and giraffe. What a privilege!

The Graduate hotel, the pearl of Nashville. (Photo: Terence Baker)

A second choice would be the Graduate Nashville. Normally, this type of hotel would not usually be my choice of hotel — a little too much of a scene, somewhere to see and be seen — but it is bright, airy, fun and felt like a haven when I returned to it. It contains a lot of pink and has a huge mural of Tennessee-born comedian Minnie Pearl behind the check-in desk.

I took my first direct flight to Nashville from London in August, and what a wonderful airport Nashville is if you must go through passport control.

Few other people do come into that airport, and if you ever have entered the U.S. in Chicago or Miami, you probably know how long the queues can be.

I am running out of hotels to stay in both Nashville — where Hotel News Now and STR host their annual Hotel Data Conference — and Berlin, where the International Hotel Investment Forum is held every year. I always want to stay in a hotel in which I have not stayed before.

This year in Berlin, I stayed at the Pestana Berlin, my second time at this small but enjoyable hotel that borders the Tiergarten park. The park welcomes runners, walkers, cyclists and some bird species considered excellent finds in England but in Berlin are more commonplace.

My search for new places to stay cannot be at the expense of a somewhat easy commute to the conference site, so I plead with developers to start building new hotels close to Berlin’s zoo and Nashville’s Broadway bar scene.

Another personal development in 2024 was starting a Europe, Middle East and Africa podcast for HNN, which has just released its fifth edition. Please listen and subscribe!

Do podcasters generally like the sound of their voices on the internet? I am not sure I am entirely comfortable doing it. But so far, the podcast has had some wonderful guests, and long might that continue.

I wish you all a very happy Christmas or holidays and look forward to joining you in 2025 as we see where the hotel industry progresses.

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.

Read more news on Hotel News Now.