HVS Hospitality Enews Europe - W/e 27 June 2003

Orbis Polishes Off 11 Accor Hotels - Polish hotel and tourism group Orbis, in which Accor holds a stake of almost 30%, has paid €92 million to relieve its principal shareholder of the ownership of 11 hotels: ten in Poland and the other a Novotel currently under construction in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. The eight Ibis hotels, including the Ibis Warszawa Centrum and the Ibis Warszawa Ostrobramska in the Polish capital, and the three Novotel properties between them total 1,677 rooms and will be operated by Orbis under franchise from Accor. As part of the deal Orbis will also manage the 249-room Mercure Frederick Chopin in Warsaw from 1 January 2004 and will have the right to manage any Accor hotel in the Baltic region under an eight-year agreement. HVS International provided valuation advice to Orbis on the deal.

Rezidor SAS Has Its Eyes On Ireland - It has one project on the boil in Belfast and is due to open a hotel in Letterkenny this August, yet Rezidor SAS Hospitality still wants more in Ireland. Two new hotels, both due to open in spring 2004 with the Radisson SAS flag flying from their poles, are destined for Sligo in the northwest and the centrally located town of Athlone. Ballincar House Partnership is behind the 132-room Sligo project, while the Earls Construction Company has invested £25 million in the 116-room Athlone hotel, which is rising on the Silver Quay complex. The new openings will bring the Radisson SAS Irish portfolio to six, with Kurt Ritter, Rezidor SAS's President, keen to introduce the company's other brands too. Another island on Rezidor's mind is Malta, where the authorities have given permission for a Radisson SAS hotel to be built at Golden Bay, some 16 km northwest of the capital Valletta. The company currently has just the one hotel on the island: the 252-room Radisson SAS Bay Point Resort on St George's Bay.

Rocco Forte Pockets Brown's - Rocco Forte Hotels (RFH) will be returning to London on 3 July, for that is the date set for the completion of its purchase of the Brown's Hotel in Mayfair. Templeco 599, a consortium formed by Sir Rocco Forte & Family and Uberior Ventures (a subsidiary of the Bank of Scotland, which is funding the deal), has paid Hotels & Resorts (UK), a wholly owned subsidiary of Raffles Holdings, £51.5 million for the 118-room property. In due course RFH will refurbish the hotel, which was once in the possession of the former Forte company, and add extra bedrooms with the aim of establishing Brown's as one of London's top luxury hotels by the end of next year.

Townhouse Group At Home In Its Back Yard - The Townhouse Group once again had no need to venture outside its home city of Edinburgh as it brought its hotel portfolio to four with the purchase, for just under £4 million, of the Maitland Townhouse. The 65-room, three-star hotel was one of 27 UK properties put up for sale in January by Corus & Regal Hotels. The Scottish capital has also seen restaurateur James Thomson take a controlling stake in the 31-room Prestonfield House. He reportedly paid no more than £5 million for the privilege, and he will now refurbish his prize and relaunch it in November. South of the border, Grace Hotels has separated from the Apollo Hotel after an unnamed private hotelier paid close to £4.75 million for the 126-room property in Birmingham.

Might Merbil Be The King Of Spades? - Turkish construction company Merbil has announced a completion date of September for a US$12 million five-star hotel it is building in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil. Reports suggest that the hotel's private owner wants the Sheraton brand to adorn the 350-bed property. Meanwhile, the port of Umm Qasr in the south of the country is the destination of the Odysseus floating hotel, which is due to drop anchor on 28 July. The vessel, which has 450 berths, has the Henry Pluge Group at the helm. Elsewhere in the region, Abu Dhabi National Hotels has officially opened the 200-room de luxe four-star Al Diar Capital Hotel in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, while in Saudi Arabia the first phase of a ten-month renovation of the 266-room Sheraton Dammam Hotel and Towers has concluded; the project is due to be fully finished by December.

Days Gets The Breaks, So Howard Johnson Hits The Road - The Howard Johnson brand is to be supplanted by the Days brand at Cendant Europe's five serviced apartment properties in the UK and Ireland. The move is part of the company's desire to create brand uniformity in Europe, and so by the end of June the cities of Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Dublin will awake to Days Serviced Apartments. The cities of London, Glasgow and Hull might be the next cities to see the light as Cendant looks to future development.

Sol Meliá: From Hard Rock To Rubble - Having last week announced its desire to develop a chain of Hard Rock hotels, it seems somehow appropriate that Sol Meliá should turn next to the Flintstones. Sol Meliá has signed an agreement with Warner Bros. that will allow the Spanish hotelier to develop themed areas using the cartoon characters to create what it refers to as Sol Flintstone hotels. The bedrock of the venture is the Sol Milanos-Pingüinos Hotel on the Mediterranean island of Minorca; three other hotels in the Balearic Islands and one on the Spanish Costa del Sol will be so adorned by next year. Elsewhere in Spain, NH Hoteles has opened the €12 million NH Príncipe de la Paz, its first hotel in the town of Aranjuez; the 86- room property is owned by the local civic authorities. AC Hotels, meanwhile, has made its third trip to Italy, where it has opened the 79-room, four-star AC Hotel Arezzo in the Tuscany region.

New Experiences In The Baltic Region - Starwood Hotels & Resorts is poised to bring the Westin brand to Poland for the first time with the opening of the 361-room, five-star Westin Warsaw. Also enjoying a novel experience, further east in the Estonian capital Tallinn, will be the Viru Hotel. On 1 September it will join the Finnish Sokos Hotels chain and will be operated by Sokotel under a ten-year agreement with the hotel's owner. The 423-room property, to be renamed Sokos Hotel Viru, is due to expand next spring by another 100 rooms. The city has also seen local shipping firm Tallink Group start work on the conversion of the former House of Services building into a 351-room hotel. Tallink's subsidiary Vara HTG purchased the property in March; the hotel is due to open in May 2004.

Hotel At Heathrow: Estimated Time of Arrival 2008 - BAA Lynton, the property arm of BAA, has ordained that the new fifth terminal to be built at Heathrow Airport will be graced with a solitary hotel. The search is now on for a suitable operator for the 600-room property, which is due to open in 2008. Now cleared for take-off close to the airport, on a site near Junction 4 of the M4 motorway, is Scottish & Newcastle (S&N), which, in partnership with Capstone Group, is to build a 130-room Premier Lodge. S&N announced earlier this month that it would be investing £10.6 million in three new Premier Lodge hotels.

Tropical Berlin? - Malaysian gaming and power company Tanjong has paired up with Colin Au, the former Chief Executive of Star Cruises, and made an offer for 500 hectares of land, and the premises thereon, owned by the insolvent German airship builder CargoLifter to the south of Berlin. The partners want to invest a reported €120 million in the creation of Tropical Island, an indoor holiday resort that will feature two hotels. Something slightly less steamy is being planned over the border in Austria, where Salzburger Land Tourismus (SLT) would quite like to see 150 hotels in Salzburg turn themselves into spa hotels over the next three years as part of SLT's drive to promote health and spa tourism in the region.

Indian Hotels Fancies Chinese, But Is Hungry For More - Although the main thrust of Indian Hotels Company's expansion strategy will take it into China, the company's outgoing Managing Director R.K. Krishna Kumar has not ruled out the possibility of venturing into Russia and then striking out westwards from there to perhaps reach as far as the USA. India's largest hotel company, which manages its overseas operations under its Taj International Hotels subsidiary, would like to acquire small chains of hotels or enter into strategic partnerships. Two Indian companies that have already slipped across the border are Ultimate Fashion Maker and Fashion Factory International, which combined under the name Sunshine-Turon International specifically to purchase the Turon Hotel in the Uzbek capital Tashkent for an undisclosed sum. The partners will now spend a reported US$5.5 million on the hotel's renovation. Elsewhere in the city, an official opening ceremony has been held for the recently renovated 250-room Le Meridien Tashkent Palace.

Menzies Hotels To Sell Two And Buy One - Menzies Hotels has put its two remaining three-star properties on the market. The 37-room Menzies Angel Hotel at Market Harborough, Leicestershire, has an asking price of £1.5 million; the asking price for the 33-room Menzies Royal Hotel in Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, is £1.2 million. The sale of both properties would take the company's portfolio down to 16 hotels, although the hole can be made partially good by the company's imminent acquisition of a four-star hotel, for which it will use some of the £72 million it raised with the Royal Bank of Scotland for acquisitive purposes.

Accor - Deutsche Bank, worried about a possible deterioration in Accor's trading in its core French, German and US markets, downgraded its rating from 'Buy' to 'Hold'.

Millennium & Copthorne - Citigroup Smith Barney lowered its rating from 'In-Line' to 'Underperform' as it encouraged investors to withdraw from perceived recovery plays in the sector.

InterContinental Hotels Group - The share price fell on market rumours that IHG might make a fresh bid for NH Hoteles. Citigroup Smith Barney reiterated its 'Underperform' rating.

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