Since its peak of 10,781 projects/1,819,486 rooms in Q2 2008, the Total Global Construction Pipeline has decreased 16% and 17%, respectively, to 9,108 projects/1,502,497 rooms at the end of Q1 2009. The world’s two largest Pipe¬lines show the steepest rates of decline, with the US falling 16% by projects and 21% by rooms and Asia Pacific down 18% by projects and 16% by rooms.

Hotel & Motel Management magazine, part of the HotelWorld Network, is pleased to announce the launch of The Distressed Hotel Summit for hospitality industry professionals to be held October 12-13, 2009, in Washington D.C.

Hotel developer Julian MacQueen spent nine frustrating months crisscrossing the country, searching for two rare commodities: construction capital and a banker with a heart of gold. Despite his impressive portfolio of successful hotels along the Gulf Coast, including the Hilton on Pensacola Beach, MacQueen was turned down by more than 50 banks, including every one in Pensacola. But MacQueen didn't get mad — well, maybe a little — he got creative. He began thinking in unconventional terms, and it paid off, to the tune of $38 million.

However, there are signs of foreign investors returning to the Malaysian hotel market, says a real estate agent. Transactions involving the buying and selling of Malaysian hotels have plunged fivefold, from RM1.2 billion worth of transactions in 2005 to RM205 million last year, as owners preferred to hold on to their assets as property prices appreciated.

On Tuesday morning, time-share salesman Albert Mora was waiting to meet potential buyers of a Tahiti Village time-share for a tour of the Las Vegas property when a fellow employee got a cryptic call from headquarters to turn away all buyers. Staff members scurried down the stairs with bundles of cash to return deposits of those being given tours. Later in the day, Mr. Mora learned that Tahiti Village's owner, Consolidated Resorts Inc., which is owned by a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. real-estate fund, was filing for bankruptcy-court protection.

As the next installment to my March 2009 article published in Hotel News Now, I thought it best to literally pick up where I left off on that date. In the last paragraph of that article I concluded that because Strategic Hotel Capital (BEE on NYSE) has a cap rate below 10%, over 200 basis points below the next lowest, its share price may still have potential for further declines. At that time, cap rates ranged from 9.6% (for BEE) to 15.4% (for Host) and averaged 12.8% for all seven REITS based on their March 2, 2009 share prices and 2008 year-end statistics. My final sentence read, "So whether you are lowering your income on a TTM basis or forecasting 2009, you can safely anticipate most of those cap rates to trend downward through 2010."

Principal Hayley Appears At The New Connaught Rooms | Plenty More Choice In Stockholm | Heathrow Lands Europe's Largest Holiday Inn Express | Park Inn Heads For Tete, Mozambique | Mövenpick's Adventures With Ulysse Will End In November | Macdonald Hotels Takes Full Ownership Of Aviemore Highland Resort | Kiessling's Corner | Save Time And Money At The International Hotel Conference

On June 5th, Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and ESSEC Business School jointly organised the first Annual Forum on Commercial and Hospitality Real Estate at the Hilton Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France. Led by Professor Dan Quan of the Centre for Real Estate at Cornell University and Professor Michel Baroni of Essec Business School, nearly 100 alumni and other industry executives from the real estate, banking and financial sectors participated in a lively debated on current developments in hospitality finance and real estate.

A real estate investment group that owns the Sears Tower said it is pushing forward with plans to build a 500-room environmentally friendly hotel next door to North America's tallest building, but released few details on financing for a project that will cost as much as $225 million. The group, which includes investors Yisroel Gluck, John Huston, Joseph Chetrit and Joseph Moinian, said they would spend $350 million to make the 110-story tower more environmentally friendly and reduce the amount of energy it uses. It plans to cut the equivalent of about 150,000 barrels of oil used annually by such steps as replacing the tower's 16,000 windows with more energy-efficient alternatives, adding solar panels, more efficient gas boilers and motion detectors so that escalators operate only as needed.

Hotels in the Asia/Pacific region experienced double-digit decreases when reported in U.S. dollars for all three key performance metrics for May 2009, according to data compiled by STR Global.