Looks like another painful day for the world’s stock markets.
European shares approached two-year lows, Reuters reported this morning, as investors feared what could become a global recession.
“The market is very concerned about the deteriorating outlook for global growth in general and the United States in particular," said Marcus Svedberg, chief economist at East Capital, which has €5 billion (US$7.2 billion) under management.
In the United States, stock futures were 89 points, or 0.8%, approximately 90 minutes before the market’s open, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index closed Thursday at 1642.49. The index this month is down 22.5%.
Cloud-based technology, which takes hardware off property to a centrally located server for on-demand functionality and accessibility, is growing in popularity within the hotel sector, reports HotelNewsNow.com’s Patrick Mayock.
Choice Hotels International, for example, has rolled out its Web-based central reservation system, choiceAdvantage, to more than 4,500 hotels throughout the world. The project, which was launched nine years ago, is picking up steam as Choice’s executives target expansion in the U.K., Australia and Germany, according to Todd Davis, Choice’s chief technology officer.
La Quinta Inns & Suites began its journey to the cloud when the company was acquired by the Blackstone Group in 2007. “The hotel isn’t the ideal environment to run complicated systems,” said Vivek Shaiva, chief information officer for La Quinta. “Our approach right from day one has been to try to minimize the technology footprint on the property.”
Buddy Watson is back. After selling his Watson Hospitality in 2007, Watson formed Pharos Hospitality to acquire, underwrite, operate, and/or asset manage hotels, reports HotelNewsNow.com’s Jeff Higley.
Adam Zembruski, chief hotel operations officer, said Pharos seeks to own/operate premium-branded hotels primarily in secondary and tertiary markets.
“Not only are we not afraid of those markets, we see huge opportunity there,” he said.
The Architecture Billings Index in July dropped by more than one point, its fifth consecutive monthly decline, according to the American Institute of Architects.
The July ABI reading was 45.1, down 1.2 points from June. That’s the steepest decline in billings since February 2010. A reading above 50 indicates an increase in billings.
“Business conditions for architecture firms have turned down sharply,” AIA chief economist Kermit Baker said in a statement. “Late last year and in the first couple of months of this year there was a sense that we were slowly pulling out of the downturn, but now the concern is that we haven’t yet reached the bottom of the cycle. Current high levels of uncertainly in the economy don’t point to an immediate turnaround.”
The advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims in the U.S. grew by 9,000 to 408,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The four-week moving average, though, fell by 3,500 to 402,500.
Compiled by Shawn A. Turner.
