Rest Assured: Three Premier Lodges Are Coming Along - It may have put the Premier Lodge chain up for sale at the end of April but Scottish & Newcastle is certainly being generous with the leaving presents. It is to spend a reported £10.6 million on the development of three new hotels: at the Friars Wall shopping centre in Reading in Berkshire; on the Riverside mixed-use development in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire; and at Heathrow. Premier Lodge, already the third-largest budget brand in the UK, is set to swell by more than 1,000 rooms over the coming 12 months; 277 of these rooms will be on P&O's Regent Quarter development at King's Cross in London and 116 at the Salubrious Place development in Swansea, south Wales, where work began this week.
Portland Finds Paradise With Milton - Portland Hotels will next month fulfil a long-held desire for expansion, and will at the same time double its portfolio, when it acquires the four properties remaining in the possession of its Scottish compatriot Milton Hotel Group. For an outlay of a reported £25 million, Portland, which has the backing of the Bank of Scotland, will receive the 129-room, four-star Milton Hotel & Leisure Club in Glasgow; the 91-room, three-star Palace Milton Hotel & Leisure Club in Inverness; and two two-star hotels in Fort William: the 97-room Alexandra Milton Hotel and the 119-room Milton Hotel & Leisure Club. Once the deal is finalised, Portland Hotels intends setting about the renovation and possible rebranding of all four hotels. And the company's ambitions are not yet sated: Portland's Chief Executive Colin Paton said he was on the lookout for further acquisitions and management contracts, with underperforming hotels that have growth potential reported to be of particular interest.
The Man From Atlantic Lands The Thistles - They had enjoyed some 14 months together but now Orb Estates and its portfolio of 37 Thistle hotels have decided to part. As was widely anticipated last week, the successful suitor was UK property entrepreneur Andy Ruhan with an offer reported to be in excess of £700 million. Mr Ruhan and his business partner Alan Campbell will welcome the properties - 31 of them in the UK provinces and six in London - into their new home: Atlantic Hotels, a company freshly minted for the occasion. Thistle Hotels, which last week saw the resignation of its Finance Director Ian Durant in the wake of BIL International's recent takeover offer, retains its management contract on all 37 hotels.
Jarvis Hotels: No Change From £17 Million - Jarvis Hotels could be forgiven for having a feeling of déjà vu as what it admitted was a second successive year of difficult trading ended on 29 March with pretax profit after exceptionals the same as it was the previous year: £17 million. Alongside a negligible dip in turnover, to £162.4 million, and with occupancy essentially flat at 65.9%, a 2.0% drop in RevPAR - testimony to the company's greater reliance on leisure business - to £34.20 came almost as light relief. Chairman John Jarvis warned that he expected trading to remain tough, and until conditions improve the company will be expending capital on essential projects only.
Radisson SAS Celebrates Its 21st In Norway - Twenty-one hotels in Norway now fly the Radisson SAS flag. The latest addition to the portfolio is the 165-room Radisson SAS Business Park hotel, which has opened on the Nydalen business park in the capital Oslo. Also popping corks is Marriott International, which has opened the 49 time-share apartments of the 47 Park Street by Marriott Grand Residence Club in London's Mayfair. Marriott, in partnership with Orion European Real Estate Fund, took over the management of the property from ABC Hotels in April 2002. Celebrating too is Kempinski Hotels & Resorts, which has raised a glass to toast its first hotel in Greece, the 99-room, de luxe five-star Kempinski Hotel Nikopolis in the city of Salonika.
De Savary Skips Skibo To Grant Bovey Its Turn - Entrepreneur Peter de Savary has ended his 13-year association with Skibo Castle in the Scottish Highlands by selling up to a small group, perhaps no more than ten in number, of members of the Carnegie Club for the sum of a reported £30.5 million. While the new owners plot ways of enhancing their new purchase - the addition of another golf course is just one possibility - Mr de Savary is heading for Dartmoor National Park in Devon, where he will develop Bovey Castle in Skibo's likeness and have his new property open by next Easter. The sale of Skibo Castle was prompted by US pension fund Westbrook Global Partners' decision in January to sell its majority holding.
A Hotel In A Brewery: Not A Chance To Pass Up - Hotel number seven in the Hotel du Vin portfolio will occupy part of the listed Brakspear brewery in the Oxfordshire town of Henley-on-Thames. The company paid a reported £3.4 million for the site, and if planning consent is granted Hotel du Vin will spend £5 million converting the building into a 42-room hotel, which is set to open next September. Meanwhile, this September is the month earmarked for the opening of hotel number six: the 43-room former Spa Hotel in the North Yorkshire town of Harrogate that Hotel du Vin acquired from Peel Hotels last June for £2.4 million; the property has been enjoying a £3 million renovation since January. Hotel du Vin co-founder Robin Hutson, speaking to The Times' Dominic Walsh, said he wanted his company to aspire to at least ten hotels, and indicated that he would be investigating sites in York, Chester, Cambridge, Guildford and Glasgow later this year.
What's Yellow And No Longer Dangerous? - The answer: the Holiday Inn Sarajevo. Its distinctive yellow exterior could perhaps be blamed for the hotel's attracting much gunfire during the civil war of the 1990s, but from now until August all its walls will be echoing to is the rustle of crisp banknotes. The local authorities in the capital of Bosnia- Herzegovina have put the 338-room property up for auction with cash bids of above US$25.6 million sought. Elsewhere in eastern Europe, Poland's Constructa Plus is to invest some US$6 million in raising two 60-bed hotels near the western Polish town of Wiejce to complement a castle on the same site that has already been converted into a four-star hotel.
Tulip Of The Valley - Golden Tulip (UK) (GTUK) has named the Team Valley in Gateshead as the location for one of the 17 Tulip Inn properties it intends to build in the UK over the next three years. The 116-room hotel, which is due to open next summer, will absorb some £5.2 million of the £33 million GTUK secured last September from Graphite Capital and Barclays Bank Hospitality & Leisure to fund its expansion plans that will see it with 30 Golden Tulip or Tulip Inn properties in the UK and Ireland.
Jurys Inn Southampton - Jurys Doyle Hotel Group is to take a 35-year operating lease on the Jurys Inn Southampton, a €27 million hotel to be built by McAleer & Rushe on a mixeduse development in Southampton city centre. The 257-room property is due to open in early 2005. As Jurys Doyle welcomed one three-star hotel to its portfolio, it said goodbye to another. It is to sell the 113-room Jurys Tara Hotel in Dublin to Woodmead for €14.2 million in cash. Meanwhile, the Irish Times has reported that Jurys Doyle will be looking to make Dublin's largest hotel (with 506 rooms) even larger with its proposal to add 146 beds to The Burlington Hotel. Joining in the bedroom romp is Shelbourne Development, which wants to build a 156-bed hotel at the Fairyhouse racecourse in Co. Meath.
The Hartman Quartet In Concert - InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has divided the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region into four, and placed a Chief Operating Officer at the head of each segment. Richard Hartman, the regional Managing Director, will oversee John Bamsey (UK and Ireland), Heinz Strobl (western and southern Europe), Arie van der Spek (central and eastern Europe) and Chris Moloney (the Middle East and Africa). IHG wants the new structure to maximise revenue generation and cost efficiencies, and thus each division will operate as a discrete unit responsible for its own affairs.
Tourism Dries Up In Wadi - Wadi Mousa near the city of Petra in southern Jordan could soon be flooded by investors looking to buy some of the 43 hotels in the town. A local press report suggests that certain owners may be forced to sell up due to the present decline in tourism locally. Such worries are presumably far from the mind of Rotana Hotels, which in its drive to have 25 properties in the Middle East by the end of 2005 is to manage the 130-room Villa Rotana, a US$40.8 million lifestyle hotel due to open in Dubai at the end of 2004. Rotana is also reported to be in negotiations to manage a 200-room hotel in the emirate of Fujairah.
Hotel Funding Now: The EssentialConference - The broker, the banker, the financial decision-maker: turn out all three on 25 June and come to Hotel Funding Now, a review of all aspects of the current hotel market brought to you by Henry Stewart Conference Studies. Hotel owners and operators, consultants and developers too are most welcome at the event, which is to be held at the Radisson SAS Portman Hotel in London. To reserve your place call +44 020 7404 3040 or email dawnB@henrystewart.co.uk.
Absolute Share Price Performance Over the Past Week 29/05/03-05/06/03
Queens Moat Houses - The share price surged on market rumours that the company may soon be making some disposals.
Sol Meliá - The share price remains high on the prospects of a good summer season and on investors being attracted by the stock's cheapness.
Hilton Group - One of the beneficiaries of a strong rally on the FTSE-100. Goldman Sachs has an 'Outperform' rating on the stock.
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