Marriott International - Goldman Sachs kept a 'Buy' rating and raised its target price from US$27.79 to US$33.00. | Starwood Hotels & Resorts - Goldman Sachs kept a 'Buy' rating and raised its target price from US$35 to US$43. | Accor - Nomura initiated coverage with a 'Reduce' rating and a target price of €35. — Photo by HVS

A For Expansion | Travelodge is taking the A road to further expansion in the UK. In partnership with pub group Marston’s, Travelodge is seeking at least ten sites by the wayside either in town or in the countryside on which to build a hotel with a pub adjoining. The pair have already travelled along the A303 down Somerset way, for early next year they are to open a 57-room Travelodge and a Marston’s pub in the town of Wincanton.

W For Barcelona | To the W Barcelona falls the honour of being the first W hotel to open in western Europe. Spanish eyes are simultaneously smiling in welcome and staring up in wonder at the 26-storey, sail-shaped hotel, which stands on the waterfront. W Barcelona, which has 473 rooms, is the third hotel in the EMEA region with the W brand. The total investment in the W Barcelona was a reported €260 million.

Happy Reading For von Essen Hotels | Von Essen Hotels has rescued The Forbury Hotel from administration. The 23-room, five-star hotel in the town of Reading, in Berkshire, will be the first hotel to enter von Essen’s Metropolitan Set, trumping the Hotel Verta, von Essen’s forthcoming hotel in Battersea, London. The deal for The Forbury, the price of which was not disclosed, included the 16 self-contained apartments and a penthouse adjacent to the hotel.

Best Western Now Showing In Egypt | Solitaire’s the only hotel in town for Best Western International, the town being Marsa Alam, on the shores of the Red Sea. The hotel is the 151-room Best Western Solitaire Resort and it is indeed all alone, as it is Best Western’s first hotel in Egypt. But before we add more salt water to the sea, let us remind ourselves that this pioneer resort will not be alone for long: Best Western is to open a hotel early next year in Zafarana, which is also on the Red Sea.

Some New Stars Come Out In France | Bring on the trumpets: the Clarion Collection Opera Pavillon has opened in Paris. The 30-room hotel, which is close to St Lazare railway station, in the city centre, is Choice Hotels Europe’s fourth hotel in Paris. Keep those lips pursed, for we need to blow a fanfare for Accor too: the Sofitel Paris La Défense has received a fifth star after meeting the requirements of the new French hotel classification system. Three Sofitel hotels elsewhere in France have secured the extra pip too; so let our final flourish be for the Sofitel Biarritz Le Miramar Thalassa, the Sofitel Lyon Bellecour and the Sofitel Marseille Vieux Port.

Hotel Planned At Bristol International Airport | Pedersen (Airport Hotels) has three hotels in Bristol and with its fourth it will become intimately acquainted with the city’s international airport. The £20 million hotel that the airport authorities and Pedersen have in mind would be approximately 100 m from the terminal and would have a maximum of 250 rooms. A planning application will be submitted within the next six months and if approval is secured, then the hotel will open in 2012.

Legacy In Cardiff: It Is Its Will | Legacy Hotels & Resorts has revealed that it will be ready to share the former Quality Hotel Cardiff with its guests from 2 November. That is the day on which 54 of the 95 freshly renovated guest rooms will be available: the balance is due 20 days later. Legacy Hotels took up the management contract on what is its seventh hotel in Wales this June. The rejuvenated hotel, Legacy Hotels’ second hotel in Cardiff, now goes by the name Legacy Cardiff International.

The Norwegian Blu | The Radisson Blu Hotel Fredrikstad, in Fredrikstad, southeastern Norway, has ceased to be a Radisson Blu hotel. Rezidor Hotel Group and the owners of the 172-room hotel Lykkeberg Hotel Drift and Lykkeberg Holding agreed to ring down the curtain on the operational agreement, and it thus ended on 1 October. Rezidor will hardly be pining for the fiords, though: the company still has 23 hotels in Norway and has at least three more to come in the near future. Choice Hotels Scandinavia has taken up a 20-year lease on the late Radisson Blu hotel, which will be renamed the Quality Hotel Fredrikstad.

Lime Wood To Flavour The New Forest | If you go down to the woods today and fail to get a big surprise (of the hotel variety, at any rate) then you will have only yourself to blame: you should have read this item first. Make sure the woods are the New Forest, in Hampshire, and for goodness' sake don’t venture down there until 9 November. Okay, so it’s not much of a surprise at all now, but 9 November is the day on which guests will be gathering for certain because that’s the day the Lime Wood hotel has its soft opening. The 33-room, five-star hotel in Lyndhurst is an eighteenth-century house that has been restored over the past five years under the watchful eye of project consultant Robin Hutson, the co-founder of Hotel du Vin.

Kiessling's Corner | Accor is planning to open a fifth Novotel in Cataluña; the Novotel Barcelona City, in the 22@ area of Barcelona, will have 264 rooms. Grupo Mas de Torrent has sold the hotel Albons, which it has owned since 1999, to an unnamed investment group. The hotel in Girona will be managed as Mas de Torrent Hotel & Spa, and will be affiliated to the hotel chain Relais & Châteaux. Lopesán Hotels & Resorts is to open the Lopesán Baobab Resort in Maspalomas (Gran Canaria). The 677-room, five-star resort is to be managed by Oasis Beach. By Gabriele Kiessling, Analyst, HVS Madrid

A Pointer To The International Hotel Conference | You might know how to navigate your plane into Venice airport; you might even know how to navigate the canals from there to the Hilton Molino Stucky. But do you know how to navigate the waters of today’s economy? Of course you don’t, else you wouldn’t have booked your trip to the International Hotel Conference click here. At this leading three-day event you are taught to navigate by the stars: the stellar line-up of some 100 speakers whose words will soon have your compass corrected. HVS London’s very own ancient mariner Russell Kett will be there; he will be ably supported by his No.1 Tim Smith and No.2 Sophie Perret. HVS London is also supplying Thomas Laakso.