One of the world’s leading hoteliers – Meinhard Huck, President, of Swissôtel Hotels & Resorts – is to be a keynote speaker at the 4th Annual BAHA (British Association of Hospitality Accountants) Conference and IT Exhibition, due to be held on Thursday, 19 November 2009 at the Sofitel Hotel, London Heathrow at Terminal 5.
Early signs indicate the UK hotel industry is over the worst, the PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) UK hotel forecast reveals today. With RevPAR1 teetering around the £50 mark, growth rates are expected to deteriorate further before Christmas but entering the New Year the speed of decline should begin to slow.
The Considerate Hoteliers Association (CHA) is delighted to announce that it has entered into a strategic alliance with BAHA (British Association of Hospitality Accountants) – the organisation for hospitality professionals involved in financial management, revenue management and IT; and the UK’s authoritative voice in the hospitality industry on financial management, technical accounting issues, taxation, and hotel valuation.
Geoffrey will be based in London and will be working very closely with the CHI Hotels & Resorts sales and marketing team, led by senior vice president Glenn Carroll. In the early stages of his appointment, Geoffrey will be concentrating on further developing CHI’s strategies across the brands that it operates and will be particularly focused on the further progression of the Corinthia brand and the Wyndham Grand Collection. He will be working with the CHI team and the Wyndham team in order to bring about further penetration and development of the Corinthia brand worldwide and the Wyndham, Wyndham Grand Collection, and Ramada brands in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Geoffrey’s most recent senior marketing positions were at director level with Sabre Travel Networks and Neos Interactive. For fourteen years, Geoffrey was the worldwide vice president for the Hilton International Company based in London and responsible for many of Hilton International’s successful brand strategies. Throughout a long career in senior marketing positions, Geoffrey has held successful and senior positions with the Granada Group, Avis Rent-A-Car in New York, Gillette, and Procter & Gamble, amongst others. Geoffrey is a British citizen and a graduate of the University of Oxford in England.
Following a series of RM & Pricing Seminars held in China, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Africa, Easy (Ez) Revenue Management Solutions, global provider of cutting-edge Solutions & Services for Hospitality Revenue Management, next month hosts the first of its 2009 European Seminar series. The event will take place in London, UK, on 16th October, at the Radisson Edwardian Kenilworth Hotel.
Campaign for hotel and holiday group NH hotels ran with 'Operation Bikini' slogan. NH Hoteles' ad featured a woman and a girl in bikinis striking poses associated with fashion models. The Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint that the image was offensive because it showed a young girl in a "sexually provocative pose".
Matthew Dixon is a well regarded international hotelier with a strong 5-Star pedigree developed in Europe and Asia. Originally Savoy trained, Matthew gained a sound knowledge of hotel marketing and operations at group level and at the Claridges Hotel London. In his early career he gained deluxe international experience in various senior executive roles with Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong and Manila. He then spent a successful period with Rocco Forte hotels as general manager of the Hotel de Russie Rome and general manager of the Brown’s Hotel London. Shortly after the opening of the Grove, the UK’s most luxurious hotel leisure and golf complex, Matthew joined the operation as general manager and until recently developed and operated this 5-Star international hotel destination as one of the world’s most unique and inspirational hotel conference and golf centres. Matthew is a graduate of Cornell University, Westminster College London and the University of Pau in France. He is a member of the Institute of Hospitality and speaks Italian, French and Swedish. He will be reporting directly to CHI Hotels&Resorts CEO&Managing Director Tony Potter and will commence his duties on the 21st of September 2009. The Corinthia Hotel in London is scheduled to open late 2010.
Costa Coffee owner Whitbread has shrugged off the recession to outperform its rivals, prompting chief executive Alan Parker to claim he has the "best job in the country" and to rebuff talk that former Boots boss Richard Baker is being lined up for his job. Whitbread, which also owns the Premier Inn hotel chain and a cluster of restaurant brands, appointed Baker as a non-executive director this morning, prompting speculation that the former retailer could move into Parker's shoes.
The highly anticipated Jurys Inn Aberdeen hotel opens today, the first business to open its doors as part of the Union Square regeneration programme. The hotel fulfils a huge need for high quality, good value accommodation in the city centre and opens just in time for the Offshore Europe 2009 next week. Delegates at the conference will be amongst the first guests to stay at this impressive new hotel in the heart of Aberdeen.
The leading British hotel consortium for quality independent hotels has completed the implementation of its new revenue management strategy to ensure rates remain competitive and occupancy is maximised by efficiently managing online travel channels. Classic British, with a portfolio of 3, 4 and 5 star properties across England, Scotland and Wales, installed a tailored version of RTSuite in its properties to help hoteliers meet the group's rate policy.
Scotland's hotels performed better than the rest of the UK with a 5.3% rise in occupancy in July, according to the accountants PKF. The rest of the UK saw a drop of 4% in the same month. Both Edinburgh and Glasgow had increases in occupancy of 7.7% and 5.1% respectively, although in Aberdeen the figure fell by 6.1%.
London hotel occupancy figures for July 2009 exceeded levels achieved in the same month last year, according to the latest HotStats survey by industry experts, TRI Hospitality Consulting. The capital’s hoteliers successfully drove volume to an historically high 88.6% for July by further discounting room rates. Achieved average room rates remain below levels achieved last year at £115.65, a drop of 13.1%.
The U.S. hotel industry might hit bottom based on some stabilization of demand, but the pinch that property owners and operators have been feeling during the past year won’t ease in the short term. That message from four company presidents who spoke during last week’s Southern Lodging Summit @ Memphis was clear and sobering; however, they did share some optimism that might have been missing had the panel discussion been held at the beginning of the summer travel season rather than near the end of it.
TRI Hospitality Consulting is delighted to announce the relaunch of the London Hotel Development Monitor in partnership with Visit London. In the July issue we present statistics on future hotel supply forecasted in London up until 2013, illustrating the potential supply by London borough. Currently, there is an estimated 13,000 new hotel rooms forecast to enter the London market by 2012, as investors look forward toward the 2012 games and beyond.
I suppose it should come as no surprise that as we managed to talk ourselves into a recession, we will now go through the process of talking ourselves out of it. There was a time in 3Q ’07 when the media went through a hilarious period of trying to convey that we might be heading for recession without daring to say the word (“Northern Rock gets bank bail out” from the BBC).
UK hotel general managers continue to be increasingly positive about their hotel’s trading performance, with growth in optimism for a second successive quarter. According to the latest Hotel Confidence Monitor by TRI Hospitality Consulting, 51% of respondents are optimistic looking towards the next three months. Since January, the proportion of optimistic respondents has risen dramatically by 23 percentage points.
Onity has announced the appointment of Harish Sinha as general manager of their United Kingdom and Ireland business unit. Based at Onity’s United Kingdom headquarters in Liverpool, England, Harish will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of Onity business in the U.K. and Ireland. Onity, one of the world’s leading providers of electronic locking solutions, is part of UTC Fire & Security, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE:UTX).
Based in Wyndham Hotel Group’s London office, Armitstead is tasked with increasing the company’s EMEA portfolio through further expansion of its Wyndham®, Ramada®, Days Inn® and Super 8® brands through management contracts and franchise agreements. Armitstead is an accomplished global executive with over three decades of experience and has executed development deals in more than 50 countries. He previously served as director and head of hospitality, EMEA, for DTZ Hospitality Group, a London-based real estate and investment banking firm. In that role, he was responsible for the growth and development of the company’s hospitality practice and providing development, brokerage and advisement services to high-profile hospitality clients. He has also served in senior level positions with Cushman and Wakefield, Carlson Companies Inc., Conrad International, Copthorne Hotels and Forte PLC.
Kew Green Hotels has become IHG's (InterContinental Hotels Group) first owner outside the USA to relaunch its entire Holiday Inn estate. Its 15 UK hotels have now unveiled their new image, with the final changes at the Holiday Inn Slough Windsor taking the number of relaunched properties in the UK and Ireland to 50.
“We intend to grow our business in the meetings market and will be looking to recruit one or two key people to help with this,” said CEO, Ian Burnley. “The meetings market is obviously very flat at the moment but our long term growth plans remain in place and we hope to find the right people to add to the team during the autumn.”