Leading Ulster hotelier Lord Diljit Rana today unveiled plans to build five more hotels in the province.  His Andras House company is to spend £50m developing the hotels under the Ibis brand, which is new to Northern Ireland. The first of the new hotels is to be built in Belfast’s King Street - and construction is set to get under way within the next few weeks.  The other locations have yet to be decided but Andras House, which already operates four hotels in the province, said the rollout will generate 200 new jobs.  Read more

The Ritz-Carlton Moscow threw open its neo-imperial doors near the Kremlin last week. The cheapest room for the summer tourist season is US$1036 ($1324) with tax.

That rate reflects how Moscow hotel openings are lagging behind room demand fuelled by soaring tourism, exports and investor interest in the world’s largest energy producer.

“I can’t spend more than US$200 a night, so I ended up a 15-minute bus ride beyond the southern end of a subway line,” said Peter Beck, Korea director for International Crisis Group, after arriving from Seoul. “When a Russian looked at the address of my hotel, he said, ‘Don’t go out at night.”‘

Little relief is in sight for business travellers. While the number of visitors to Moscow hit 3.8 million last year, up from 300,000 in 1991, wrecking crews have demolished four Soviet-era hotels in the past five years, wiping out 5000 hotel rooms within a 10-minute walk of Red Square.  Read more

The attractions of the British hotels sector looked rosier yesterday as news of the proposed sale of Hilton Hotels Corporation moved analysts to speculate on the prospect for further takeover activity.

InterContinental Hotels and Whitbread stood out among the large-cap risers. Of mid-cap stocks, Millennium & Copthorne pushed higher.

Blackstone’s agreed $26 billion (£13 billion) deal for Hilton valued the hotels giant at a 32 per cent premium to its closing share price before last night’s announcement.   Read more

Epoque Hotels goes to Italy. The American company continues to excel in establishing the most coveted collection of acclaimed luxury boutique hotels in the world, and is getting ready to introduce itself to the Italian public in Milan. On June 7th, 2007, Epoque Hotels begins the European campaign in the first city of Lombardy at the Hotel Enterprise, offering a conference dedicated to tourist professionals, followed by a cocktail reception open to the public. Attending the conference also the K-West Hotel & Spa - London, Hotel Tourville - Paris, Mirò Hotel - Bilbao, Hotel Gran Central - Barcelona and the 3.14 Hotel - Cannes, some of the finest properties of the collection.  Read more

In the same week that Paris Hilton hits the headlines with the start of her jail sentence, the Hilton group has announced a major new development, which will see 55 new hotels built by 2012.

The cost of the project will be $1.7 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, with hotels planned in Russia, Britain and Central America.

Eleven major Russian cities will see the 25 new hotels planned for the country, including Moscow and St Petersburg. Read more

The “Bio-Hotels”-group is celebrating its 6th year in existence. The club counts a total of 45 businesses from seven EU states to its member-list, eleven of which are in Austria. The bed capacity of the accommodation business is at the moment 2900 beds, and the number of employees is around 1000 and increasing. There is a real chance for Austrian hoteliers to use the profitable eco-boom in tourism.  Read more

Hotels are engaging in a technological arms race, piling on guest-room gizmos such as TV projectors and iPods outfitted with guests’ favorite songs. Increasingly, though, travelers such as Laura Gibbon are becoming casualties.

Gibbon, of Brighton, England, stayed earlier this month at Hotel Omm, a chic boutique hotel in Barcelona, Spain. Her children, ages 8 and 10, stayed in an adjacent room and wanted to leave their bathroom lights on overnight. But the light switches were so complicated - there was even a manual for them in the room, Gibbon says - it was impossible to discern how to keep the bathroom lights on and the room lights off at the same time. “If you turn one on, they all go on,” she says  Read more

A growing number of city centre hotels are facing up to their environmental and social responsibilities, according to the April edition of greenhotelier. The magazine’s feature ‘City hotels - greening the urban jungle’ examines how city hotels are implementing green strategies at all levels of policy and management, from the initial design of the hotels to their day-to-day operations.  Read more

Continuing its efforts to cut back on owned assets and focus on managed and franchised properties, Hilton Hotels Corp. is selling up to 10 European hotels to a fund managed by Morgan Stanley Real Estate for approximately $770 million, the company said in a statement.

Hilton also announced today it completed the sale of the 132-hotel Scandic chain to EQT, a Swedish buyout firm, for approximately $1.1 billion. CPN reported March 2 that the deal was expected to realize net proceeds of approximately $1.04 billion from the sale, which would be used to reduce debt.� Read more

Interstate Hotels & Resorts, one of the nation’s largest independent hotel management companies, today announced that the company has been selected to manage two Holiday Inn hotels in downtown Moscow, Russia: the 301-room Holiday Inn Moscow Lesnaya Hotel and the 312-room Holiday Inn Moscow Suschevsky Hotel. Both properties are owned by Mospromstoi, a major, Moscow-based construction and hotel ownership company.

“These two contracts represent our sixth and seventh hotels in Moscow, where we have established a major management presence, and bring our total number of management contracts in Europe to nine,” said Thomas F. Hewitt, Interstate’s chief executive officer. “We now have six hotels under contracts with Mospromstoi, and we look forward to continuing our relationship.” Read more