With the growth of the celebrity industry its no wonder that celebrity hotels are becoming more famous. And we don’t mean the Hilton! We mean the hotels that celebrities are booking into along with their entourage and ever present paparazzi. These celebrity hotels are increasing the notoriety and reputation as the place to be and be seen.
Lowe Enterprises Investors (LEI) announced today that Lowe Resort Finance Investment Partners, a discretionary investment fund managed by LEI, has provided $75 million in mezzanine financing to a joint venture between Bayrock Group and Sapir Organization for the development of the 413-unit Trump SoHo condominium-hotel project in the SoHo district of Manhattan. Lowe Resort Finance Investment Partners offers mezzanine debt and preferred equity financing for resort and hotel properties throughout the US and Canada. Read more
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Other investments sites for venture capital includes Berkeley International Capital Corporation
Choice Hotels International (NYSE:CHH) continues to grow with the announcement of 55 newly-opened franchised properties during the month of July. The openings include hotels in 18 states and 10 countries and will add more than 4,003 rooms to the company’s existing 440,000-plus rooms. Select properties that opened in July include - Read more
The hotel construction boom continues in Hendricks and Marion counties, just west of the new passenger terminal at Indianapolis International Airport.
Three more Hilton-brand hotels, ranging from four to seven stories tall and totaling 395 rooms, could be under construction this year.
Local hotel developers confirmed their plans for the three new buildings next to the Six Points Road interchange of I-70. Read more
Hawaii hotel occupancy is still below 2006 numbers, while room rates continue to exceed last year’s.
For the week of July 22-28, statewide hotel occupancy is down 7 percentage points to 79.6 percent. On Oahu, the occupancy rate is down 13 percentage points to 78.6 percent, according to the latest report from Hospitality Advisors and Smith Travel Research.
Things are better on Kauai, however, which filled 87.3 percent of its rooms, the highest occupancy in the state. That represented an increase of 12.6 percentage points from the same period last year. Read more
Harlem already has multimillion-dollar condos and an office building that houses ex-President Bill Clinton. Next on the list for the area’s evolving gentrification are plans for luxury hotels expected to soon break ground.
A 19-story hotel with as many as 260 rooms is planned for Fifth Avenue and 125th Street. It will include banquet and meeting space.
A few blocks away, at 124th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, where an Associated supermarket once stood, space has been cleared, possibly for a fancy W Hotel.
Either project would become Manhattan’s first major hotel built north of 110th Street in 40 years. Read more
Steve Sackman knew it would be a major undertaking to replace more than 5,000 light bulbs at the 212-room hotel.Yet the upscale Tarrytown House Estate & Conference Center expects a major payoff in lower utility bills as a result of the investment. The new compact fluorescent bulbs installed in the guest rooms, hallways, conference rooms and the lobby last 10 times longer and use far less energy than conventional light bulbs. Sackman said it is good news for the environment because each new bulb will save about 450 pounds of power-plant emissions over its lifetime.
“It is the right thing to do from a standpoint of cost savings and being a more profitable organization,” said Sackman, the regional director of sales and marketing at Tarrytown House. “But it also is about being a socially and environmentally responsible organization. That is certainly at the front of everyone’s mind right now.” Read more
Hospitality Properties Trust today announced that it has sold 18 Homestead Studio Suites hotels (2,399 rooms) for $205.35 million. HPT expects to recognize a gain on this sale of approximately $95 million.
HPT purchased these 18 hotels in 1999 from Homestead Village, Inc. (which was then a publicly owned company) for $145 million. The expected gain reflects depreciation expense realized by HPT since 1999. Simultaneous with this purchase, these hotels were leased by HPT to a subsidiary of that seller for minimum rent of $15,960,000/year plus percentage rent based upon increases in gross revenues at the hotels. In 2006, the percentage rent received by HPT for these hotels was approximately $509,000. Read more
Lodgian, Inc. , one of the nation’s largest independent owners and operators of full-service hotels, today announced it had sold the 202-room Holiday Inn hotel in Ft. Wayne, Ind. and the 159-room Holiday Inn in Bridgeport, W. Va. to undisclosed buyers in separate transactions for an aggregate price of $5.6 million. Proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.
HREC Investment Advisors represented Lodgian in both transactions. “Our disposition program, which was announced in November 2006, continues as planned,” Ed Rohling, chief executive officer of Lodgian. “We now have sold 22 of the 27 non-core hotels designated in the program, have an additional three properties under contract and two hotels being actively marketed.” Read more
The greening of the Habitat Suites hotel in Austin started with a simple decision in 1991: The hotel stopped using pesticides on the property.
“We’re not pulling out machine guns to kill a roach,” says general manager Natalie Marquis. “It’s enlightened self-interest.”
Since then, the hotel (www.habitatsuites.com) has become more environmentally friendly. Some measures were easy, such as replacing standard light bulbs with compact fluorescents and using soap dispensers instead of bars of soap. Other adaptations were more expensive and challenging, such as installing systems to collect solar energy and turn off air conditioners in rooms when guests weren’t present. Read more