Right on time for the Olympic Summer Games 2012: The third Bulgari worldwide is currently under construction in Central London in the elegant Knightsbridge area (TOPHOTELPROJECTS Project Nr. 10052). Following Bali (since 2006) and Milan (since 2004) this boutique hotel offering 85 rooms and suites is the latest and much-noticed engagement of this multinational life style corporation.
A difficult end to the year has not stopped hoteliers in London recording a second consecutive year of profitability growth, according to the latest HotStats survey of approximately 550 full-service hotels across the UK by TRI Hospitality Consulting. The 4.7% increase in profit per room in the capital in 2011 was primarily due to a 6.1% increase in Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR), which was led by a 7.0% increase in the achieved average room rate for London hotels to £131.03 from £122.45 during the same period in 2010.
With the London 2012 Olympic year upon us, TravelClick, the leading hotel market intelligence provider, is using its forward-looking data to provide regular updates of how the London hotel market is performing in terms of demand and rates.
Katherine will be responsible for all the sales activities for the 50 Abercrombie & Kent Destination Management Companies around the world and will also oversee sales for the Sanctuary lodges, camps and ships. Katherine is based at the Group’s HQ in London and will be a leading member of the team taking forward A&K’s e-commerce platform. Katherine has extensive experience in the travel industry stretching back over a decade. Previously she was Director of Multimedia Sales at Thomas Cook, was a founding member of Silverjet, the all-business class airline, and more recently was the Sales & Marketing Director for British Midland International. She joins Abercrombie & Kent from Circle, the employee co-owned private & NHS hospital operator, which floated on the AIM stock market in 2011.
Robert Cook, former Malmaison and Hotel du Vin chief executive, has been named as the successor to Gary Davis, former Village Hotels chief executive for De Vere, confirming what appears to be a direct job swap between the pair. Cook, who at 45 has been in the UK hotel industry for 24 years, will start his new role with the De Vere Group on Monday 16 January following the immediate departure this week of Davis to the role at Malmaison and Hotel du Vin which Cook vacated in November.
New Year’s Eve celebrators who want to bid 2011 farewell in London better be prepared for an expensive hotel bill. A new survey compiled by CheapHotels.org has revealed that if they haven’t yet secured a hotel room along the River Thames, London guests may end up paying 600% more than usual this December 31.
The winners of the prestigious Annual 'Hospitality Finance, Revenue Management and IT Awards of the Year 2011' were announced last Thursday (15 December) in London by HOSPA (formerly BAHA) – the UK's leading educational organisation for professionals involved in financial management, revenue management and IT within the hospitality industry.
Simon Davis has recently been appointed as the General Manager for the Apex London Wall Hotel in the heart of London City. Simons career in the hotel industry began in 1998 as trainee manager in the 5 star Meikles Hotel in Zimbabwe. He worked through roles as restaurant manager and banqueting manager before emigrating to the UK in 2002 to join Arora Hotel Crawley as their Conference & Events Manager. In 2004 he relocated with the company to the Arora Manchester in the capacity of Assistant Front of House Manager and ran the department in 2005 whilst deputising in the absence of the General Manager.
Hotel profitability in London has been challenged in recent years due to the combination of new supply and the macroeconomic environment, according to a report from STR Global and Whitebridge Hospitality that analyzes the true state of profitability in the hotel sector in London and the Regional U.K. since 2000, with data based on two consistent samples of hotels (totalling more than 31,000 rooms).
As we move closer to Christmas and the start of London’s big Olympics year, there are many new developments in the UK capital’s boutique sector – things to look forward to and offers to check out. We summarise what’s hot in the London boutique hotel scene below in our monthly round-up. The five-star Egerton House Hotel plans to make guests feel even more at home this Christmas with complimentary refreshments in the drawing room.
The winners of the 2011 'Career Investment Development Scholarships' of HOSPA – the new name for BAHA, the UK's leading educational organisation for hospitality professionals involved in financial management, revenue management and IT – were announced last week at HOSPA's Annual Conference: HOSPACE 2011, held on Thursday 24 November at the Sofitel Hotel, London Heathrow at Terminal 5.
This blog has been campaigning intensely for free WiFi at hotels for quite a while. We’ve been supported by a network of leading travel bloggers and tweeters across the world including the likes of Velvet Escape, Top Travel Content Europe, Elliott.org, Travel Rants and many others. The hostility to hotel WiFi charges across the blogosphere is almost universal and yet many hoteliers choose to ignore it, while hypocritically pretending they’re “in” on Twitter and Facebook. They’re acting like embarassing dads – inappropriately dressed and showing off dated moves in a club they don’t belong in. Because charging guests extra for WiFi at expensive hotels goes against the whole grain of how people live today.
Despite continued growth in achieved average room rate, hotels in London suffered a 0.7% decline in Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR) this month as yearon-year room occupancy levels dropped by 2.4 percentage points, according to the latest HotStats survey of approximately 550 full-service hotels across the UK by TRI Hospitality Consulting. In addition to the decline in rooms revenue, hotels in London endured unfamiliar declines across all ancillary departments, including a 7.9% drop in food and beverage revenue to £30.23 per available room and a 4.6% decline in meeting room hire revenue to £7.64 per available room.
Morgans Hotel Group Co. (NASDAQ: MHGC) ("Morgans" or the "Company"), the operator and 50% owner of the London joint venture that owns Sanderson and St Martins Lane, today announced that the joint venture partners have closed on the sale of the Sanderson and St Martins Lane hotels to Capital Hill Hotels Limited, a Middle Eastern investor with other global hotel holdings. The sale price for the two hotels is 192 million pounds Sterling, or approximately $300 million, and represents a value of approximately 542,000 pounds, or $847,000, per room.
'New Approaches to a Bright Future?' is the title of the one-day HOSPACE 2011 Conference & Exhibition – to be held on Thursday, 24 November 2011 at the Sofitel Hotel, London Heathrow at Terminal 5
Peter Lloyd has been appointed executive chef W London, which includes running the hotel's restaurant Spice Market. He replaces Tim Tolley, the US-born executive chef who left just weeks after the hotel opened following a spate of negative reviews. Lloyd will oversee all aspects of the hotel's food offering, working with New York-based chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who devised the Spice market concept. After training at the Dorchester hotel, Lloyd went on to work at Suka, the Malaysian restaurant at the Sanderson hotel, and at Bank restaurant and bar. "The pairing of Spice Market with the W brand has been one of the most exciting launches on the London hotel and restaurant scene this year," said Lloyd. "It is a privilege to be involved at such a senior level." Vongerichten with his company, Culinary Concepts, operates four Spice Market restaurants - in Atlanta, New York and Doha, as well as London.
W London has announced two major appointments following the loss of its general manager and executive chef within eight months of the opening of the 192-bedroom hotel in Leicester Square.
Jonathan Sheard will be responsible for leading MGallery and Mercure hotels including subsideries, managed hotels and franchisees. Sheard joined Accor in 1992 as general manager of Novotel Sheffield and later became director of operations for Mercure. MGallery, Accor’s upscale brand, launched in the UK last month with the inauguration of St Ermin’s Hotel in St James. The collection will grow to over 150 sites by late 2015. Mid-market brand Mercure has more than doubled its UK footprint this year with 70 hotels.
A comprehensive programme of 18 ‘Interactive Educational Workshops’ – on topical subjects ranging from ‘Emerging technologies to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)’; ‘Exploring your online competitive advantages’; and ‘Transforming businesses with e-invoicing and e-procurement’, to ‘Payment Card Identity (PCI): cutting through the confusion’ and ‘Hosted Solutions: the way forward?’ – will make putting ‘theory into practice’ the order of the afternoon for hospitality finance, revenue management and IT professionals at HOSPACE 2011.
Located on London's Park Lane and originally built in the 1920s, Grosvenor House Apartments by Jumeirah Living has undergone a complete internal rebuild and refurbishment. Highly stylised and contemporary in design, the property's 133 apartments range from studios through to five-bedroom penthouses, providing the largest luxury serviced accommodation in London.