London’s hotel market is leading the recovery in European hotel performance after 13 consecutive months of decline, research has revealed. The study by consultancy Deloitte and STR Global highlighted a dramatic increase in revenue per available room (revpar) in November for hotels in the capital, rising 10% compared to the same month last year, from £119 to £138.
Debrah Dhugga has been appointed to the position of General Manager at Dukes, St James’s, a 90-room, 100-year-old hotel in London's Mayfair district. Debrah has spent nine years at Malmaison, building the brand with entrepreneur Ken McCulloch. In 2005 Debrah joined Tom’s Companies as CEO, responsible for operations for the boutique hotels, Seaham Hall in County Durham and The Samling in the Lake District and was instrumental in achieving a number of prestigious awards including AA Hotel of the Year, twice, a Michelin Star and Best Spa Awards. Debrah joins CampbellGray from GHD where she was Director of Retail and Spa.
Herb Kohler, Chairman and CEO of Kohler Co., today announced that the company, through its subsidiary, The Old Course Limited, has purchased Hamilton Hall of St Andrews, Scotland, one of the most photographed buildings in the world of golf. Kohler Co. emerged as the accepted party from a competitive bidding process for the property conducted by Jones Lang La Salle and the Bank of Scotland. The Old Course Limited now owns and operates the 5 AA Red Star Old Course Hotel, the Kohler Waters Spa and The Duke’s golf course, all of which will play a role in the future of Hamilton Hall.
NFS Hospitality are excited to announce a number of new resort clients who have adopted their range of Hotel, F&B and Banqueting solutions in the UK and internationally.
The UK’s leading independent search marketing agency, Greenlight, has released the latest in a series of integrated vertical industry insight reports, this time delving into the highly competitive hotel sector. The report focuses on paid search as well as natural search to offer an in-depth analysis. The results are based on search volumes for September 2009 and refer to visibility on page one of Google’s search results.
With a year-on-year increase of 1.5 percentage points in October 2009, to 85.1%, the London hotel market recorded the second highest occupancy performance for the capital in 2009, according to the latest HotStats survey by industry experts TRI Hospitality Consulting.
Dorchester Collection is pleased to announce the appointment of Zoe Jenkins in the role of General Manager for Coworth Park, its new 70-room country house estate and spa to open in Summer 2010. For the past six months Ms Jenkins has been overseeing the pre-opening project and launch plans as Director of Operations. In her new role as General Manager she will report directly to Christopher Cowdray, Chief Executive, Dorchester Collection. Ms Jenkins has a long career with The Dorchester where she has worked for the past 15 years, most recently as Food & Beverage Director. Prior to joining The Dorchester Ms Jenkins worked in conference and banqueting management positions at a number of other luxury London hotels including Hotel Intercontinental Hyde Park , The Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge and The Park Lane Hotel on Piccadilly.
Bob Cotton OBE – Chief Executive of the UK hospitality industry’s trade body, the British Hospitality Association (BHA) – was presented with a special award last week by BAHA (British Association of Hospitality Accountants) in recognition of his outstanding service to the UK hospitality industry during his tenure at the BHA.
Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®) representatives will educate attendees this week on hospitality technology during the 4th Annual BAHA (British Association of Hospitality Accountants) one-day conference and exhibition. The conference — entitled "The Essential Toolkit for Managing the Bottom Line" — is Thursday, November 19 at the Sofitel Hotel, London Heathrow at Terminal 5.
A comprehensive programme of highly topical interactive education workshops will make putting ‘theory into practice’ the order of the afternoon for hospitality finance and IT professionals attending the 4th Annual BAHA (British Association of Hospitality Accountants) one-day Conference and Exhibition – entitled ‘The Essential Toolkit for Managing the Bottom Line’ – to be held on Thursday, 19 November 2009 at the Sofitel Hotel, London Heathrow at Terminal 5.
Confidence amongst UK hotel general managers is at a high for 2009. Looking towards the next three months, 61% of respondents are either optimistic or very optimistic about their hotel’s trading performance. For the fourth successive quarter hoteliers are increasingly optimistic. According to the latest Hotel Confidence Monitor by TRI Hospitality Consulting, 50% of respondents are more optimistic than they were three months ago, equivalent to a 34 percentage point increase since January.
When Conran Restaurants sold its 50 per cent stake in the Great Eastern Hotel, in the City of London, in February 2006, it vowed to return to the hotel business as soon as possible. Today, the company, now called D&D London, will unveil its plans for a £50 million hotel in nearby Moorgate as the first step in developing a small chain of boutique hotels.
Deloitte, the business advisory firm, has confirmed that hotels in the UK saw revenue per available room (revPAR) fall 10.9% to £60, during the first three quarters of 2009. Average room rates fell 7.2% to £85 while occupancy dropped 4.0% to 70.5%. Hoteliers in London saw revPAR fall 7.4% to £98, as £10 were knocked off average room rates compared to last year. Occupancy saw a marginal decline of 0.2% reaching 80.4%.
CLEVELAND -- Nov. 10, 2009 -- Agilysys, Inc. (Nasdaq: AGYS), a leading provider of innovative IT solutions, including specifically-designed hospitality software solutions, has announced that the Connaught, one of London's most prestigious hotels, has implemented ResPAK, the specialist dining reservations and table management module. ResPAK is fully integrated with InfoGenesis™ POS by Agilysys, which the property has used for the past two years.
Today, eRevMax/RateTiger announced its new corporate and management structure, together with plans for global expansion through organic growth and acquisitions. With the development and introduction of new products over the last few years, eRevMax has become the largest and leading provider of online benchmarking and channel management technology in the hospitality marketplace. Just recently the software company successfully launched the first automated revenue management system, RTStrategyEngine, and completed the acquisition of 'SimpleDistribution', a web-based channel-management solution for small hotels, from RateReports. Going forward eRevMax will continue to invest into its leading product lines while accelerating growth through strategic acquisitions.
EZYield.com, the originator of automated online distribution management solutions for the worldwide hospitality industry, today announced the addition of Thistle Hotels and Guoman Hotels to its growing list of hotel clients around the globe. The London-based hotel management group recently selected EZYield.com as its channel management and reservation delivery technology partner for their 37 properties throughout the UK, and will add two more properties in Malaysia to their EZYield.com portfolio by the end of 2009.
The UK hospitality and leisure sector is currently operating within some of the worst trading conditions seen for many years. During this period of instability, are there downward pressures on executive pay? Or do remuneration committees acknowledge that incentivising key individuals is essential and arguably more important during the current crisis?
Xn globalRES, a division of Xn Hotel Systems, will be announcing a raft of significant enhancements to its distribution management system at World Travel Market, London, 9th – 12th November.
One of the hospitality industry’s most influential champions, who has raised the profile of the profession in the UK to unprecedented levels in recent years, is to be the keynote speaker at the 4th Annual BAHA (British Association of Hospitality Accountants) Hospitality Finance and IT Professionals Conference and Exhibition – to be held on Thursday, 19 November 2009 at the Sofitel Hotel, London Heathrow at Terminal 5.
Effective 6th October 2009, Mr. Allvey is in charge of The Oberoi Group’s present and future portfolio of hotels, resorts and cruisers under the luxury ‘Oberoi’ and five star ‘Trident’ brands. Mr. Mark Allvey is responsible to Mr. Liam Lambert, President, Oberoi Hotels & Resorts. He is based at The Oberoi Group’s office in London. Mr. Allvey has more than twenty years experience in the hospitality industry. More recently, Mr. Allvey was the Global Director of Sales and Marketing for the Rocco Forte Collection. Previously, he was the Vice President, Sales for One&Only Resorts. Mr. Allvey has held the position of Director, Sales and Marketing for the Pan Pacific Hotel in Singapore and Vancouver. He was also the Regional Director of Sales and Marketing for the Morgans Hotel Group (formerly Ian Schrager Hotels), overseeing St Martin’s Lane Hotel and Sanderson Hotel, in central London. Mr. Allvey has also served as Chairman of the Pacific Asia Travel Association’s (PATA) Environmental Committee.