Film house Paramount Pictures is partnering with a group of investors who are looking to build up to 50 luxury hotels globally, according to a Bloomberg report.
The hotels will be Hollywood-, and California-themed properties. Potential locations include Brazil; the United Kingdom; the Caribbean; Russia; Qatar; Oman; South Africa; and Indonesia. The properties will be in large city and tourist destinations and some could be part of theme parks.
“It’s not like we are trying to develop something that looks like Planet Hollywood or Hard Rock Hotel,” said Thomas Van Vliet, CEO of Paramount Hotels & Resorts. “It will be a more subtle and creative adaptation of the Hollywood element into the concept.”
Average room rates grew by 10.2% and revenue per available room was up 7.2% during the first quarter for Meliá Hotels International.
Looking forward, the company expects revenue-per-available-room growth of 1 percentage point for the remainder of 2012 based more on the increase in rates rather than occupancy, the company said.
The Palma de Mallorca, a Spain-based company added six hotels to its 34-hotel pipeline, which comprises 10,959 rooms, 87% of which are outside Spain. Meliá counts more than 350 hotels and 87,000 rooms in its system worldwide.
In more earnings news, hotel real-estate investment trusts enjoyed a solid first quarter, according to a report from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.
Companies generally met or exceeded earnings expectations, KBW said. “Thus far, there appears to be no visible deterioration in the business environment despite ongoing macro concerns,” KBW said.
Group pace, though still displaying a short booking window, has shown improvement, according to KBW. High-single-digit growth in 2013 group RevPAR could be possible.
Further, KBW said RevPAR growth for the REIT sector is expected at 6% to 8% this year.
STR’s Jan Freitag today takes a look at hotel performance outside the oft-cited top 25 U.S. markets.
Though average daily rate and demand have fluctuated during the past 10 years, an analysis of the markets by STR, parent company of HotelNewsNow.com, shows a lot of homogenization, Freitag said.
For instance, the difference in demand percent change between the largest 25 markets and the next 50 markets seems negligible. From an owner/investor perspective this probably means that it will be increasingly harder to find a portfolio of markets that outperform the U.S. numbers, Freitag writes.
More people will travel for leisure this summer in the United States (86%) than did so last year (81%), according to TripAdvisor’s summer travel survey of 1,800 U.S. respondents.
In a separate survey of more than 1,200 U.S. respondents, 86% said prices at the pump will not have an effect on leisure travel plans, though 10% said they would take more trips by car as gas prices drop. Of those on the road, 70% said they will stay at a hotel during their trip, up slightly from a year ago. Further, 34% of respondents said they will travel for Memorial Day this year, also a slight increase over 2011.
Compiled by Shawn A. Turner.
