Zedwell converts underused London buildings into windowless "cocoon" rooms focused on rest, with new capsule format offering £30 stays to capture spontaneous demand.
The author argues that hotel development stagnation stems from financing constraints and regulatory barriers, calling for renewed collaboration between developers, operators, and local governments.
In a hospitality industry where boutique often means niche and scale often means compromise, GINTO Hotels is quietly proving that the two can coexist. On a recent trip to Paris, I had the opportunity to meet with Brice de Puymorin, Julien Kiefer, and Emmanuelle Pochat, the visionary trio behind GINTO, and to experience their philosophy firsthand during a stay at PILGRIM, their bold Left Bank property. What emerged from our conversation was more than a brand story—it was a blueprint for a new kind of urban hospitality: one that preserves the charm and substance of a neighbourhood hotel while delivering a business model designed for growth across Europe.
The UK hotel investment market saw record-high transaction volumes in 2024 primarily driven by major portfolio deals such as Edwardian & Village. While Q1 2025 showed a 72% reduction in volume, a higher number of deals were recorded, totaling 28 individual transactions. Institutional buyers drove transaction activity in Q1 2025, accounting for 40% of total volumes. This reflects a shift from Q1 2024, when the market was primarily dominated by private buyers. The Upscale & Luxury segments led marginally in terms of market share (25% & 23%, respectively), though total volumes were down. Looking forward, single asset transactions are expected to dominate, supported by increased price alignment between buyers and sellers and fewer anticipated portfolio deals by year-end.
For H1 2024 a total of €655M was transacted, a near fourfold increase on the approximately €173M traded in H1 2023 – this pushed transaction volumes over the past year to an all-time high of almost €790M. Activity was supported by continued good operational performance across the sector and a couple of large deals including the sales of the Shelbourne Hotel and a majority stake in the Dean Hotel Group.
Prime yields have moved modestly higher over the past twelve months but looking forward we expect them to stabilise, boosted by gradually looser ECB monetary policy with the first steps in this journey occurring in June with a 25 basis point interest rate cut. With growing appetite among investors and liquidity in the debt markets, we expect to see a gradual yield sharpening for prime assets as we progress into 2025.
Despite ongoing supply growth, the occupancy and ADR in Irish hotels remained healthy in H1 2024, with only minor softening relative to H1 2023. While RevPAR in Ireland declined by 1.2% to €125 in H1 2024, it was the 3rd-highest level in Europe. In Dublin, the occupancy reached 80% in H1 2024, the second highest in Europe, albeit a minor decline from 2023. This, combined with a 4% drop in ADR, resulted in a 5% RevPAR decrease, although 23% above pre-Covid level in 2019.
510 new rooms were delivered in Dublin in H1 while Premier Inn also opened their first hotel in Cork in January. We estimate there are currently in excess of 1,700 hotel rooms under construction in Dublin (around 6% of Dublin’s room stock) while two hotels in Cork are also due to open later this year. The new supply is welcome to satisfy growing demand, particularly in the Dublin market, albeit the increased competitiveness might constrain occupancy and ADR growth.
Ireland’s economic outlook continues to support the hotel sector. Employment hit another all-time high of 2.71 million while wages (up 4.7% year on year in Q1) are now growing in real terms as inflation (2.2% in June 2024) eases. Tourist trends also continue to be strong. Overnight trips by foreign visitors (over rolling 12-month periods) gradually rose in the first half of the year as has the average spend.
The recent Covid crisis has highlighted the resilience of the hotel sector in France. An investment in a hotel (as in a boutique hotel) should also be regarded by investors as a “pleasure asset”. When benefiting from the French favourable tax reinvestment regime, what should investors be looking at if they wish to make the switch to hospitality?
The Swiss Alps have always been a popular tourist destination, with demand for reservations at ski resorts, restaurants, and other hospitality-oriented businesses in the mountains seeing a sharp increase in recent seasons.
Five years ago, the future of Swiss winter ski resorts was somewhat dim, after consecutive winter seasons with little to no snow and despite a relatively stable number of tourists. There was a perception at that time that existing resorts would be required to transition into four-season resorts simply to continue to exist. That dim view became somewhat rosier, when the snows returned and top resorts saw the return of skiers in record numbers of visitors for the next three winters, climaxing in 2019.
More than ever, off-plan hotel leases[1] are making headlines in the leisure real estate industry. Stemming from real estate law professional practices, off-plan hotel leases reconcile the legal and financial interests of three distinct actors: the developer (seller), the investor (owner) and the operator (tenant).
With an asset and liability guarantee agreement (Garantie d'actif et de passif, or GAP, under French law), the buyer obtains a contractual warranty for ensuring that the price it is paying matches the value of the company being sold. A post-sale tax adjustment or industrial tribunal proceedings in favour of an employee? A GAP agreement covers disputes prior to the sale, if these disputes were undeclared or if insufficient provisions were made for them.
In hotel management agreements, hotel chains and owners regularly negotiate what is referred to in the industry as key money. This is the case when competing hotel chains invited to tender by owners are prepared to invest significantly in the long-term management of high-end properties considered strategic for their development. Often considered as proof of a hotel operator's genuine interest in managing a specific property, key money can be a valuable resource enabling a hotel chain to expand on new markets and in strategic locations, without having to allocate significant costs to such development. The brand is thus able to invest in a selected hotel, transforming it into a flagship property.
Much progress has been made over the past 40 years in the accommodations sector! The new chain concepts have enabled the hotel business to develop considerably in France and Europe and, for some, in the rest of the world. Hotel groups are now number 1 on the old continent and the French hotel industry is one of the largest in Europe. This industry is thriving with very positive growth prospects and it is in full development. More tourists are arriving from all horizons and going to all destinations, what could be better!
French commercial leases and contract law governing hotels, hotel residences, tourist residences and restaurants constitute essential legal and economic stakes. In this sense, the 2014 Pinel Law represents a major legislative change for landlords and tenants.
Recently Italian financial markets have had a negative influence from the result of Brexit and the lately bank crisis. Therefore, the pursuit of protected goods like properties increased. Italian houses prices have been declining since 2008, especially in some metropolitan cities and tourist resorts. According to the ISTAT (the Italian National Institute of Statistics), the prices have fallen by 13.7% from Q1 2010 to Q1 2015. While in the first 3 quarters of 2016, the prices fell by 0.9% over the same period of the last year.
Investor interest in fixed-income hotel real estate is at unprecedented levels. Fund managers increasingly see leased hotel assets as an attractive portfolio option amid the current low interest rate environment. The scale of investor appetite was underlined by CBRE Hotels' inaugural Fixed-Income Breakfast, where attendees representing leading UK and European investor groups debated the key challenges and opportunities within the European hotel sector.
For anyone trying to run a business and plan ahead uncertainty is rarely welcome, particularly in the hospitality sector. Few things throw up more uncertainty than this week's referendum in the UK on the country's continued membership of the European Union. Polls show the two sides are neck and neck – and with Britain's recent run-ins with unreliable polling data, nobody is willing to make a call on which way this referendum will go until the votes are counted in the early hours of Friday morning.
This week a new kind of hotel experience debuted in Amsterdam. The opening of the very first Zoku concept represents a real turning point, one where trend becomes design, and design becomes the hype. For years hotel strategies have skirted the evolution mobile, tech, and a stoked Millennial Generation. Now Zoku makes a first-of-a-kind concept hotel, one where business dissolves into pleasure. We talk a lot about the space where high tech trends intersected with guest experience and progress, but this hotel seems designed to create, rather than to prognosticate.
Earlier this month upscale boutique hoteliers, 25hours Hotels opened a stunning new hotel in Hamburg, the Altes Hafenamt on the harbor. I had the opportunity to talk with the new hotel's director, Nina Quitmann about the impact, and the potential of this new property. I think you will find her in depth and detailed responses to be telling of how excellent hotels come into being.
Saar Sharon is the newly appointed CEO of Leonardo Hotels in the UK, where his brief is to lead the company's expansion through asset acquisition, joint ventures and leasing across the UK. As an alumnus of the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, we thought it fitting to ask one of Saar's old professors to interview him on behalf of The Hotel Yearbook. Demian Hodari, the school's expert on hotel ownership and management structures, rose to the occasion. Their conversation touched on the advantages of being small and emerging trends in ownership structure.
Croatia is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic at the crossroads of Central Europe, Southeast Europe, and the Mediterranean. Its capital city is Zagreb. Croatia covers 56,594 km² and has a diverse mostly continental and Mediterranean climate. Its 1,244 islands and reefs are a distinguishing symbol of Croatian tourism and a comparative advantage in its development. Due to such natural assets, nautical tourism is an especially valuable and successful segment of Croatian tourism and presents an pportunity for investors to venture into this highend market, which is still ignificantly underdeveloped. The country's population is 4.26 million.