HVS Hospitality Enews Europe - W/e 20 September 2002
We Move Ever Closer To The Summit
HVS International looks forward to meeting you at The International Hospitality Real Estate Summit, which runs from 9th to 11th October 2002 in Barcelona. This prestigious event is being held in conjunction with Barcelona Meeting Point. If you have not already registered, then please visit the website at
HVS International looks forward to meeting you at The International Hospitality Real Estate Summit, which runs from 9th to 11th October 2002 in Barcelona. This prestigious event is being held in conjunction with Barcelona Meeting Point. If you have not already registered, then please visit the website at
Dutch private equity fund Hospitality Europe BV (HEBV) is to sell two five-star hotels from its eight-strong portfolio: the 230-room Sheraton Hotel Pulitzer in Amsterdam and its city companion, the 408-room Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel & Conference Centre. HEBV wants to find long-term owners for each hotel now that its programme of developmental work on each has finished. In Paris, meanwhile, the Grand Vacation Company, a subsidiary of the US Sunterra Corporation has paid an undisclosed sum for the 48 time-share apartments of the Royal Regency hotel. Another capital to register a sale was London, where Swiss firm Hapimag sold the 66-room, three-star Best Western Mornington Hotel on Lancaster Gate to an unnamed offshore investor for an undisclosed sum. Another Swiss company selling up is Glanzmann Immobilien, which has disposed of the 31-room, four-star Hotel Château Gütsch near the Swiss city of Lucerne to Italy's Turin Hotels International (THI) for an undisclosed sum. THI operates 11 luxury hotels in Italy, four in Egypt and one in each of Albania and Brazil. Up for sale in Marmaris in western Turkey is the privately owned 340-room, three-star Lidya Hotel, which has an asking price of more than US$13.2 million. In Poland a complete hotel company is up for sale. The Polish government intends to sell a 60-72% stake, valued at up to €24.6 million, in Polskie Tatry, which operates five three-star properties, a total of some 486 beds, in its hometown of Zakopane in the south of the country.
Le Méridien has revived plans for a sale and leaseback of ten of its hotels in continental Europe. The company hopes to raise a reported £300 million to £400 million, money which will go towards the clearance of debt. An original plan to raise £1.25 billion was revised in April this year to a slightly more modest target of £750 million, following a fall in property prices. The names of some of the hotels reputedly involved in this latest proposed deal are the same though: the Ritz hotels in Madrid and Barcelona, and the Hotel Eden in Rome. This deal may be awaiting launch, but there are no such delays to Le Méridien's drive to increase its worldwide room count by 22% to 45,398 over the next four years. The plan will be initiated next month at Le Méridien Grosvenor House in London, which for an investment of £88 million will enjoy a 50% increase in its room count to 882 and be able to entertain 3,600 people in Europe's largest ballroom. According to company Chief Executive Juergen Bartels, the plan is being started now so that Le Méridien will be ready for the economic upturn that Mr Bartels predicts will begin in the first or second quarter of 2004.
Six Continents has aroused media interest by postponing the release of its second-half trading update by 12 days from 18 September to 30 September, the day its current financial year ends. The company stated that the delay was necessary to enable it to present a clearer picture of its position, an explanation which has only partially satisfied most commentators and has led to inevitable speculation. Some analysts expect a profit warning to be issued ahead of the release of the company's full year results. Others have suggested that recent talk of a demerger of the pubs division may be turned into action, or perhaps, others say, Six Continents is at last ready to announce that it has resolved its dilemma of whether to make an acquisition or return one-third of its £3 billion cash pile to shareholders.
Singaporean property company CapitaLand has denied reports suggesting that it was poised to sell its 60.6% stake in Raffles Holdings. Those reports claimed that CapitaLand had been soliciting for offers for the company which owns 38 hotels worldwide, including the landmark Raffles Hotel in Singapore and the Swissôtel portfolio. CapitaLand's response was that it had no firm plans to sell at present, nor had it given any encouragement to prospective purchasers. The company is intent on continuing to actively manage its assets to maximise value to shareholders.
NH Hoteles is to invest some €8 million and eight months of its time in converting the 54 hotels in the Astron Hotels chain to the NH brand. Six of the Astron hotels are in Austria, and the rebranding process will thus mark the debut of the NH brand in that country. The strength of the Astron brand in Germany, Switzerland and Austria meant NH Hoteles was initially hesitant about proceeding with this step in the process announced last November which was designed to make NH the company's pan-European flagship brand. However, the company now acknowledges that there are great benefits, particularly cost savings, to be derived from operating the portfolio, which it acquired in February, as a homogeneous product.
AC Hotels has moved another step closer to its goal of opening 27 hotels this year by unveiling the €10 million 120-room, five-star AC Grand Class hotel in the northern Spanish city of Logroño (La Rioja region). Meanwhile, Spanish real estate company Fadesa is to invest €3.3 million in the construction of a hotel in Almería ( Andalusia), one of five hotels, a total of 200 rooms, that will be standing on the El Toyo complex by 2005.
Groupe Fadesa Maroc, a subsidiary of Spanish real estate firm Fadesa, has taken a 75% share in a joint venture, known as Activ Hotel, formed with Moroccan real estate firm Omici. Together they will develop a 1,000-room, four-star hotel in Casablanca, due to open in 2005, and into which Groupe Fadesa Maroc has invested €6 million. In nearby Tunisia, four new hotels with a total of 1,390 beds are to be built in Monastir on the eastern coast. On the opposite side of the Mediterranean, the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro has attracted the Moscow city authorities, which plan to build the Moscow Hotel at an unspecified coastal location. Meanwhile, Jarvis Hotels has ventured to Tel Aviv, where it is reportedly negotiating the purchase of the privately owned 47-suite Sea Hotel, which has an asking price of US$11 million.
Marriott International has pencilled in 11 November as the opening date of the 157-room London Marriott Hotel Park Lane. The hotel's owner Marylebone Warwick Balfour has spent a reported £95 million on converting the property. Meanwhile, the Welsh capital Cardiff is the location of choice for Park Plaza Hotels, which will have a 130-room, four-star hotel on the £35 million mixed-use Park View development in the city. Further along the south Wales coast, Swansea has welcomed what is likely to be its first five-star hotel after local businessman Martin Morgan opened the 20-room Morgans Hotel, which he transformed from the former Port Authority building at a cost of £2.5 million. Elsewhere in the UK, the Ascott Group hopes to have the £30 million Somerset Merchant City aparthotel in Glasgow open by Christmas, and Golden Tulip UK has added the names of Leeds and Nottingham to that of Birmingham as cities where it would like to have some of the 17 Tulip Inn hotels it plans to develop over the next three years. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Walls Properties is seeking planning permission to build a 200-room hotel alongside the M50 ring road in north Dublin.
Next month Six Continents will open the 450-room Inter-Continental Garden Reef Resort in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt. This hotel opening will be followed up in the first half of 2003 with the unveiling of two hotels, an Inter-Continental and a Holiday Inn, at the US$600 million CityStars Heliopolis Cairo mixed-use development. By the end of 2003 Six Continents will be managing 16 properties in Egypt. On the Arabian peninsula, Best Western has conquered a new territory by opening the 70-room, four-star de luxe Best Western Hadda Hotel at Sana'a in Yemen. Meanwhile, the Bahraini Pearl Tourism Company is to invest US$159.2 million in the construction of hotels, restaurants and luxury homes on two islands, to be named the Pearl Tourism Islands, lying off the Bahraini coast near the capital Manama. Elsewhere, the Bahrain Hotels Company will be venturing outside the region for the first time early next year when it opens the five-star Ocean Paradise Resort on Zanzibar off the coast of east Africa in a joint venture with the Bahrain-based Paradise Realty Holding Company.
The share price responded to the seemingly relentless activity of Jack Petchey, who has now taken his holding to 13.86%.
Many hotels on Majorca are to close early for the winter after one of their worst summer seasons. Sol Meliá has 30 hotels on the island.
Analysts in Singapore are concerned about the detrimental effect any US action against Iraq would have on the company's earnings. Brokers were also actively selling the stock of City Developments, which has a 52% stake in M&C.
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