Hospitality Net

Norman's Wisdom: Use HVS Executive Search - The guiding hand of HVS Executive Search in London has ushered Peter Norman through the door marked 'Senior Vice President - Acquisitions and Development Europe' at Dolce International's offices in Paris. From his desk there Mr Norman, formerly Senior Vice President - Development with Le Meridien, will drive his new employer's plans to expand in the European conference hotel sector. For more information on HVS Executive Search, please contact Christopher Mumford on +44 (0)20 7878 7740, or email him on the address at the end of this newsletter. Also adjusting to life in a new chair is hospitality industry veteran J.T. Kuhlman, who is the new Chief Executive Officer of One&Only Resorts, Kerzner International's luxury resort brand. Mr Kuhlman, once President of the InterContinental and Crowne Plaza brands, will be responsible for the development of the One&Only brand worldwide. He will be assisted in his task by the brand's new Chief Operating Officer Paul Jones, who has already served in the corresponding post in Kerzner's International Division.

Rocco Forte: Nouveau In Beaujolais - Rocco Forte Hotels' ninth hotel in its portfolio is its first in France, where it has signed a contract with Lady Hamlyn to manage the 21-room, luxury Château de Bagnols, which sits in the heart of the southeastern Beaujolais region, near the village of Bagnols. Having entered one new territory, Rocco Forte Hotels will now go on to repeat the trick in Germany, where it plans to open a hotel in Frankfurt in 2006. Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts' concern across the border in Switzerland is the thorough renovation of the 335-room Mövenpick Hotel Zürich-Airport, work which should be finished by next June. While many hands are at work there, you will have to rely solely on your own pair if you stay at the Omena Hotel Tampere. The 105-room property in southwestern Finland is the second in Omena Hotels' self-service line, a concept that will be extended across Finland next year with openings in Vaasa, Oulu and Helsinki.

Alchemy Does Not Prolong Life At Paramount - Private equity firm Alchemy Partners is to sell its 90% holding in the Paramount Hotel Group for some £250 million, according to a report by The Times' Dominic Walsh. Paramount has a portfolio of 16 luxury hotels running the length of the UK, and Finance Director Ian Goulding Is whetting the appetite of prospective buyers with forecasts for 2003 EBITDA and turnover of a reported £22 million and £66 million, respectively. Buyers will scan the sales brochure in vain though for two of the hotels: the 199-room Queens Hotel in Leeds and the 218-room Chesford Grange Hotel in Kenilworth, Warwickshire; this pair of properties is excluded from the deal. Alchemy Partners acquired them for a reported £40 million from Le Meridien earlier this year through a specially created leisure investment company named Quintessential Hotels.

Getting The Beers In? That's The Spirit! - As many observers had anticipated pub company Spirit was the last one standing as Scottish & Newcastle called time on the six-month race for its Managed Retail business. Spirit and its companions - Texas Pacific Group, Blackstone Group, CVC and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity - collectively calling themselves Spirit Amber Bidco for the occasion will pay £2.51 billion in cash for the 1,406 pubs and restaurants, and the 131 hotels in the Premier Lodge chain. If the deal is approved next month by S&N's shareholders, then Spirit will become the leader in the UK's managed pub market and will have the bonus of knowing that S&N's beer and cider brands will be flowing through its pipes for the next seven years. Watching proceedings from a corner table were Whitbread and Travelodge, which might be forgiven for thinking that the event for them has lost some of its fizz. Each was hoping that the winner would be wanting to sell the Premier Lodge part of the business; however, reports suggest that Spirit has no immediate plans to do so.

KIPCO Not Sleeping In Beirut - The Lebanese capital Beirut is to welcome a new 300-room, five-star hotel, after United Real Estate, a subsidiary of the Kuwait Projects Company (KIPCO), joined forces with local firm Horizon Development to build the property as part of a US$250 million mixed-use scheme in the city's Verdun district. A similar project that has been occupying the mind of the Majid Al Futtaim Group for the past two years will finally come to fruition this month when work starts on the US$816 million Mall of the Emirates mixed-use development outside Jebel Ali in Dubai. A 400-room, five-star hotel will be engulfed by what will reportedly be the largest retail space outside North America; shoppers should note an opening time of September 2005. Jebel Ali will still have room though for the fruits of the joint endeavours of Dubai Investments and Union Properties: a 43-unit Marriott Executive Apartments property and a Courtyard by Marriott hotel, both of which will be open by the middle of 2004.

Keane Keen On Holiday Inn In Ireland - Hotelier and publican Martin Keane is reported to be holding talks with InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) with a view to securing franchise rights in Ireland on the Holiday Inn brand and on either the InterContinental or the Express by Holiday Inn brands too. If he is successful in his mission, the report adds, then Mr Keane would rebrand his 97-room, three-star Blooms Hotel in Dublin and would also have a flag to run up the pole outside a new 90-room hotel he has long been wanting to build in the Irish capital on the site of the former Iveagh Market complex. IHG currently has four Holiday Inn hotels in the Republic. Away from these intrigues, Radora Developments has been given permission to start work on a €450 million mixed-use development on Dublin's Southside that will include a 168-room hotel.

Sol Meliá Is Cendant And Morocco Bound - Sol Meliá has signed a strategic alliance agreement with the Cendant Corporation, and, as the Spanish company's Vice Chairman Sebastián Escarrer suggests, one benefit of the agreement will be the opportunity it offers Sol Meliá to develop its time-share business worldwide. The news of this alliance helped offset the disappointment of Sol Meliá's having to cancel its management contract on four hotels in Morocco. The company revealed that the hotels in question had failed to measure up to its brand standards, but added that the move did not mean it was abandoning the country. In contrast, Sol Meliá's compatriot Riu Hotels & Resorts is very comfortable with life on Grand Canary, where it has reopened the 368-room Hotel Riu Grand Palace Maspalomas Oasis after renovation work lasting more than four months and costing €10 million. AC Hotels, meanwhile, has opened the 92-room, four-star AC Martorell in Martorell, near Barcelona.

Kremi Is The Source For Invalda's Stake - Lithuanian investment holding company Invalda is now the sole owner of Valmeda after Invalda's asset management subsidiary Kremi acquired from the Baltic American Business Fund the outstanding 33.34% stake for a reported US$1.9 million. Valmeda itself is the owner of the 134-room Holiday Inn Vilnius in Lithuania. Down in the Albanian capital Tirana almost 60 overseas hoteliers are reported to be milling around outside the 161-room Tirana International Hotel, which has been put up for sale by the government. Danubius Hotels, meanwhile, is to sell the Hotel Aulus in Romania after a decree by the Romanian courts, which have, however, let the Hungarian hotel group retain ownership of the Hotel Bradet at the Sovata hotel complex. Elsewhere in eastern Europe, the Bulgarian Foreign Investment Agency is scouting for investors who might be interested in establishing the US$14 million Arapya Vacation Village on the Black Sea coast; the development includes at least two four-star hotels.

Marriott A Touch Down In The Third Quarter - Marriott International is looking forward with optimism to 2004 and the promise the year holds of 3-4% RevPAR growth in the North American market. This will provide a welcome contrast to the essentially flat RevPAR in this market for the third-quarter ending 12 September 2003 and a distraction from the soft economy in continental Europe, which in the company's words 'continued to pressure hotel results'. Net income for the quarter of US$93 million was 18% down on last year's comparable, with hotel profits 13% lower, at US$140 million. Marriott forecasts that this latter figure will fall somewhere on or between US$225 million and US$235 million in the fourth quarter; RevPAR growth in the fourth quarter is forecast to be 2% at most, but whether this will be positive or negative remains to be seen.

You Will Recognise The Hotel By Its Red Carnation - Red Carnation Hotels has bloomed for the first time in the UK countryside, after it paid an undisclosed sum for Summer Lodge in Evershot, near Dorchester in Dorset. The private owners of the 18-room hotel, which is associated with Relais & Châteaux, will however be staying on for another year to smooth the transition in ownership. Another set of private owners celebrating is to be found over the border in Scotland, where the town of Auchterarder in Perthshire saw a new private owner move into the 11-room Cairn Lodge Hotel & Restaurant, which sold for an undisclosed sum off an asking price of more than £1.5 million.

Jurys Doyle Hotel - GroupABN Amro placed an 'Add' rating on the stock.
Whitbread - The share price climbed in response to Scottish & Newcastle's sale of its managed pubs business.
InterContinental Hotels Group - Goldman Sachs has an 'In-Line' rating on the stock, and spoke favourably of a potential recovery in the US market.

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