With hundreds of thousands of visitors showing up in Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympics, which begin Friday, hotel owners have been dusting off something they haven’t used for some time: their “No Vacancy” signs.
Marriott International announced the opening of the two addresses, further strenghtening the group's presence in Latin America on the eve of the Summer Olympics hosted by the Brazilian city. Marriott International strengthens its presence in the host city of the upcoming Summer Olympics, with two additional openings under the AC Hotels brand. Overlooking the beach in the eponymous neighborhood, the 378-room AC Hotel Rio de Janeiro Barra da Tijuca also offers an outdoor pool. Similarly boasting a panoramic pool as well as a fitness center but operating in the city's northeast, the AC Hotel Rio de Janeiro Porto Maravilha offers a 225-room capacity.
UNICO HOTELS, a new aspirational adults-only, all-inclusive hotel brand designed to reflect each property’s locale and native culture, has officially launched. The nomenclature will play on the latitude and longitude of each location with the first hotel, 20° 87°, an UNICO Hotel located in Riviera Maya on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, scheduled to open in Q1 2017.
The Gavea Tourist is an empty shell of a hotel, a 14-story modernist monument of disintegrating concrete and decaying beauty that has been abandoned for four decades. It is one of three huge, architecturally stunning ghost hotels in Rio de Janeiro, all of which are vacant in a city facing a shortage of rooms for June’s World Cup soccer tournament. Rio could use the Gavea Tourist’s 400-odd rooms. Instead, it is an emblem of the obstacles that hinder Brazil’s World Cup preparations: cumbersome bureaucracy, a slow-moving judiciary and a lack of imaginative planning.
Armed with expanding credit and rising incomes, Brazilians are spending more – and that includes on travel. Demand for domestic flights surged in the first half of 2010, while hotel rates are also up. “More and more Brazilians are travelling and spending money on hotels”, Ricardo Mader, executive vice president of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, an investment services group, told beyondbrics.
Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Jumeirah Group plan to open their first hotels in Brazil as rising incomes in Latin America’s largest economy and the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic games generate demand. “The time is right now for us to be entering the Brazilian market,” James Erlacher, senior vice president of development for the Americas at the Dubai-based Jumeirah Group, said in an interview in New York.
Brazil's hotel industry remains attractive even at a time in which international tourism is suffering the consequences of the crisis. The country's potential as an investment target was highlighted at the 2nd South American Hotel & Tourism Investment Conference (Sahic), held this week in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in southeastern Brazil. According to the general coordinator of Investment Promotion of the Ministry of Tourism, Laércio de Souza, who attended the event, the market perception is that the reduction in the average occupation rate of hotels was low when compared with other countries and, at the same time, fees have increased, thus making up for the lower number of visitors.