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1. Hyatt To Buy Standard International
Hyatt Hotels Corp. is on track to buy Standard International, which owns the Standard and Bunkhouse Hotels brands, for up to $335 million. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2024 and will lead to the creation of a new lifestyle group within Hyatt led by current Standard International Executive Chairman Amar Lalvani.
Standard's 100% asset-light portfolio includes 21 hotels with roughly 2,000 rooms. The company has an additional 30 projects in its pipeline. Hyatt officials say the company quintupled the size of its lifestyle portfolio from 2017 to 2023 through the combination of organic growth and various acquisitions.
Earlier in the week, the company announced the $1.07 billion sale of the Hyatt Regency Orlando, which marked the biggest asset sale price in the company's history.
2. Japan Notches Another Tourism Record, Faces Rate Increase
For the second straight month, Japan has set a record for inbound visitors as the country enjoys an ongoing tourism surge from the weak yen. Roughly 3.29 million foreign visitors came to the country in July, Reuters reports based on data from the Japan National Tourism Organization.
That's the highest month on record, topping the previous of 3.14 million set a month earlier.
In other Japanese news, the Bank of Japan is expected to once again raise rates before the end of the year, according to a survey of economists.
3. Texas Judge Throws Out Noncompete Ban
A federal judge in Texas has thrown out the Federal Trade Commissions rule banning noncompete agreements, saying the agency lacks the power to set the rule, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The role of an administrative agency is to do as told by Congress, not to do what the agency thinks it should do,” U.S. District Judge Ada Brown wrote.
The FTC is weighing an appeal of the ruling, with a spokeswoman noting they agency will “keep fighting to stop noncompetes that restrict the economic liberty of hardworking Americans, hamper economic growth, limit innovation and depress wages.”
4. West Virginia Governor Seeks To Avoid Greenbrier Foreclosure
Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, who is currently running for a U.S. Senate seat as a Republican, is fighting to stop the foreclosure of The Greenbrier, which his family owns, ABC News reports. Roughly 400 employees at the historic luxury resort have also received notice they'll soon lose healthcare coverage because the resort's owners are behind on $2.4 million in payments.
Justice's family is seeking an injunction to stop the auction of the property. The move is based on unpaid debts to a credit collection company called McCormick 101, which bought the debt on the property from JPMorgan Chase. Justice's family has owned the Greenbrier since buying it out of bankruptcy in 2009.
5. Dissecting Weak July Revenue Growth on Tell Me More Live
In the first live episode of the Tell Me More podcast, recorded earlier this month at the Hotel Data Conference, CoStar's Jan Freitag and STR's Isaac Collazo dove into the reasons for July's muted revenue per available room growth. They discussed how lower-end hotels were dragging down the national averages.
In July, year-over-year RevPAR growth was at 0.1%, while average daily rate growth was 0.6% and occupancy fell 0.5%.
Collazo noted part of the problem stemmed from calendar shifts, but not all of it.
"We traded a Saturday and a Sunday for an extra Tuesday and Wednesday," he said. "We looked at the 29 match days of the month; RevPAR wasn't that much better those 29 days. Match days were only up 0.6%."