Tag: hostels

BlackRock Enters Hostel Sector Through the Creation of a JV with Amistat

7 June 2019 – Hosteltur

BlackRock Real Assets has acquired an initial portfolio of three hostels and six establishments in the pipeline from the Barcelona-based hostel chain Amistat Hostels through the creation of a joint venture worth €100 million.

Specifically, Amistat currently operates two establishments in Spain: the Amistat Beach Hostel in Barcelona and the Amistat Island Hostel in Ibiza, and is also building another hostel in Barcelona. In addition, it has signed agreements to open another six hostels in Rome, Porto, Lisbon, Dublin and London.

According to Thomas Mueller, European Head of Value-Added Real Estate at BlackRock, this transaction represents a great business opportunity as although the hostel market has attracted a growing number of institutional investors in recent years, it is still an undervalued sector, due to its fragmented nature and “very low brand penetration”.

Original story: Hosteltur

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Azora Prepares a Fund to Invest €1.3bn in Hotels & Hostels

30 May 2019 – El Confidencial

Azora is currently holding conversations with various investors to launch a new fund through which it hopes to invest between €1.2 billion and €1.3 billion in hotels in Spain as well as in hostels in the main tourist markets across the Mediterranean.

The company founded by Concha Osácar (pictured above) and Fernando Gumuzio expects to launch the vehicle within the next few weeks as soon as agreements have been signed with the first anchor investors.

Azora, which used to manage the Socimi Hispania, until it was sold to Blackstone last year, has been very active in the Spanish hotel market in recent months after it purchased a hotel portfolio in Benidorm and the Costa del Sol in March comprising 1,670 rooms.

The company is also expected to enter the market for nursing homes for the elderly in conjunction with another fund, with the aim of investing up to €300 million over the next few years.

Original story: El Confidencial (by E.S.)

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Azora Buys Hotel Pez Espada & Hotel Riviera in Málaga from Med Playa

9 May 2019 – Diario Sur

The Azora group has purchased the iconic Hotel Pez Espada in Torremolinos and Hotel Riviera in Benalmádena from Med Playa, as part of a larger operation involving seven establishments located in Benidorm and along the Costa del Sol.

In total, the investment group has added 1,670 rooms to its portfolio as a result of the transaction and it expects to invest €30 million in the repositioning of the seven hotels. The chain Med Playa will continue to manage all of the properties for a period of up to 35 years.

Hotel Pez Espada has 235 rooms, a 4-star rating and was refurbished by Playa Med as recently as 2017. It was inaugurated in May 1959 and was one of the first establishments to be built on the Costa del Sol at the start of the tourist boom. Its clientele included Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot, amongst others.

Meanwhile, Hotel Riviera, which is also a 4-star property, is located next to Puerto Marina, serves adults only and has a sauna, spa, restaurants, gym and solarium.

From this operation, it is clear that Azora is committed to investing in tourist destinations with assured success, such as the Costa del Sol and Benidorm. It is currently creating a new fund to invest in holiday hotels along the Mediterranean and in hostels in the main European tourist cities.

Original story: Diario Sur (by Pilar Martínez)

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Excem to Promote 5,000 Luxury Homes in the Costa del Sol & Murcia

21 November 2018 – Eje Prime

Excem is increasing its commitment to the luxury residential sector. The company owned by the Hatchwell family has set itself the objective of promoting 5,000 luxury homes on the Costa del Sol and Murcia, within the context of the development of its LOV Real Estate division. To launch these homes, which will follow in the footsteps of a development on Calle Fuencarral in Madrid, Excem has created the brand Solomon Homes.

Excem’s plans with LOV Real Estate involve starting to promote its entire land bank in 2019. The first projects to be commercialised in the south include four promotions in Condado de Alhama, one of the best resorts on the Costa Cálida. In that complex, LOV has already started work on the construction of Villa Primavera, Villa Amapola and Villa Atardecer, as well as Edificio Poniente. The company plans to hand over those homes next summer.

Further south, on the Costa del Sol, the property developer is finalising the signing of several projects with “the same model of avant-garde and unique architecture” in the area, on the fashionable coastline of the Spanish residential market. The company expects to achieve a return of more than 20% in each of its projects.

The starting point for luxury

Nevertheless, Excem’s starting point with LOV Real Estate will be a 25-home development on Calle Fuencarral in Madrid. The group’s first development will involve an investment of €14 million and will be located at number 142 of the Madrilenian street, right in the heart of the Spanish capital.

The company has already started work and its pre-sales amount to 80% with just four homes left to market. The buyers include investors and architects, explain sources at Excem (…).

The property developer plans to handover those homes, which will have between one and three bedrooms, before the end of 2019. The homes will have surface areas ranging from 55 m2 to 175 m2, and prices starting at €400,000, and going up to €1.5 million (…).

Excem: true to its roadmap 

The last investment vehicle launched by Excem Real Estate, the real estate division of the Excem Group, was Siwork, specialising in co-working and for which the group has partnered with WeWork, as Eje Prime revealed. With Excem Capital Partners Siwork, the group stays true to its roadmap: to be present in the Spanish real estate sector with three Socimis, diversified by type of asset and focused on millennial clients.

The first of the three companies launched by the Israeli family in Spain was Excem Capital Partners Sociedad de Inversión Residencial. Specialising in rental housing aimed at millennials, the company debuted on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) in July worth €17 million. Currently, the company owns 28 assets in Spain and has several shareholders ranging from private investors to business people and family offices.

Besides Excem Capital Partners Sociedad de Inversión Residencial, the Hatchwell family also operates in the Spanish real estate sector with Situr, a firm specialising in tourist properties such as apartments and hostels. The investment target for this second Socimi is approximately €250 million between now and the rest of 2018. The company has set itself the objective of having 3,500 beds in a dozen buildings, located primarily in Madrid and Barcelona, as well as in other tourist cities around the country.

With the activation of Siwork, the plans for this new company involve carrying out an investment of €200 million to acquire a dozen buildings in Spain’s main cities.

The Hatchwell family’s links with the real estate world date back to the beginning of the 1970s, when Mauricio Hatchwell Toledano founded the group, specialising first in cement and later in technology and real estate. Nowadays, the company is led by his children David, Philip and Kareen Hatchwell Altaras.

Original story: Eje Prime (by J. Izquierdo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s CNMC Takes Madrid, Bilbao & San Sebastián to Court Over Anti-Airbnb Legislation

7 August 2018 – El País

The competition authorities are cracking down on the attempt by some of Spain’s large Town Halls to regulate the boom in tourist apartments, created by Airbnb and its competitors, which many blame for contributing to an increase in residential rental prices and the expulsion of the most underprivileged from the centre of Spain’s cities. The National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) announced on Tuesday that it is going to challenge the urban planning rules approved recently in Madrid, Bilbao and San Sebastián on the basis that they violate “competition” and harm consumers and users. Other rules, not yet in force, in Barcelona and Valencia, could also be targetted by the CNMC, warn sources at the agency.

Imposing a compulsory licence on those who rent their homes to tourists. Limiting the types of properties that may be leased for short periods. They are some of the measures introduced by the Town Halls that the CNMC is now challenging. And the battle doesn’t stop there. New rules that other cities decide to approve may also clash with the opinion of the market regulator, which is now sending the cases of Madrid, Bilbao and San Sebastián to the High Court of their respective autonomous regions. They will have to decide whether to admit the appeals and overturn, in part or in whole, the municipal regulations.

The body chaired by José María Marín Quemada said that it has sent a request to the three municipalities to provide explanations regarding the “need and proportionality” of the restrictions or, failing that, for those restrictions to be annulled. In the absence of a satisfactory response, the CNMC will resort to the courts through a contentious-administrative appeal. The informal talks held so far have made very clear the gulf that separates the independent body from the Town Halls.

In its note, the CNMC details the different regulations that are, in its opinion, deserving of appeal for being measures with “restrictive effects on competition”. Madrid requires a licence for the rental of tourist apartments and homes. The municipality also establishes a period of one year, extendable for one more, before new licences can be granted in areas such as the Centro district. According to the recently approved legislation, the rental of tourist apartments that do not have an independent entrance will be prohibited, which represents 95% of the homes in the city centre.

In both Bilbao and San Sebastián, the regulations limit tourist apartments to ground and first floors only, unless they have independent access from the street. In Bilbao, moreover, tourist apartments need to be authorised and registered; and in San Sebastián new tourist apartments are prohibited in certain parts of the centre.

Higher prices

The Competition authority believes that, with their decisions, the municipal teams in Madrid, Bilbao and San Sebastián “are impeding the entry of new operators and consolidating the position of the existing suppliers of tourist accommodation”. The body has announced that these measures will lead to “higher prices in terms of tourist accommodation” and lower quality, investment and innovation in tourist accommodation in those three cities (…).

The affected municipalities reacted quickly, stating that they will defend their regulations in the courts. The Town Hall of Madrid, governed by Manuela Carmena (Ahora Madrid) said that it wants to combine the defence of tourism with the rights of “citizens in our neighbourhoods”, according to Julio Núñez. “Our objective is introduce regulation that protects the residential use of land and favours competition in a sector where hostels and hotels already operate”, add sources at the Urban Planning Department (…).

Original story: El País (by Luis Doncel)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Treasury Requires Tourist Rental Platforms to Submit Quarterly Informative Returns

1 March 2018 – Expansión

The Government wants to put a stop to the fraud that is happening in the emerging market for tourist apartments. To this end, it is going to intensify the inspection of companies dedicated to the transfer of use of flats, such as Airbnb, HomeAway, HouseTrip, MyTwinPlace, Only-apartments, IntercambioCasas and Rentalia. For that, it is going to require them all to provide much more information and it will conduct a quarterly control of all of their activities. Through this, it wants to improve the “prevention of tax fraud for people and entities, in particular, the so-called collaborative platforms that mediate the transfer of use of homes for tourist purposes”, according to the draft ministerial order designed to put a stop to these kinds of irregularities, to which Expansión has had access. The text approves the so-called “model 179 informative declaration”, together with the conditions and procedures for presenting the required information before the Treasury.

The measure forms part of the strictest control that the Treasury wants to exercise over intermediaries in a rising sector, such as the tourist rental market, which has experienced a genuine boom in recent years and which now has 513,820 beds, 30% more than the sum of Spain’s hotels, hostels and B&Bs (393,838), according to data from Exceltur.

Until now, some of the main initiatives have been directed at users themselves, such as the warning issued last year by the Tax Authorities to more than 21,500 people that had leased their homes through these platforms, advising them that they must declare the money received in their tax returns.

The Treasury wants to close the door on the lack of transparency surrounding certain tourist rentals, behind which are sometimes even hotel chains, which lease homes through the platforms, and are in turn disguised as private users.

As a result, the ministerial order that the Department of Tax Management at the Tax Authority has prepared, emphasises certain concepts that may seem obvious, such as the importance of identifying the owner of the home or of the right “by virtue of which use of the dwelling is transferred”, if that is different from the rightful owner of the home. Moreover, all of the features of a property must be identified. Together with the general registry information, the specific details of each one of the operations that are carried out must be reported: the number of days during which a client leases the home and the price paid to the owner in exchange for its use.

This new order from the Treasury comes in addition to local legislation from many Town Halls such as those of Barcelona, Madrid and the Balearic Islands, which have proposed “ceilings” to stop the overheating of rental prices that has resulted from the boom of Airbnb and similar platforms. In fact, according to calculations from Urban Data Analytics for this newspaper, the upwards trend from the collaborative economy has caused rental prices to rise by an additional 6% in the Eixample district of Barcelona and by an additional 4% in the Centro district of Madrid in one year. That happens because the properties in question generate double the returns of a long-term rental property “A 40 m2 one-bedroom home in the Puerta del Sol area of Madrid generates €1,513 per month on Airbnb and a traditional rent of €700”, says the company by way of example.

Grace period

(…) This ministerial order (…) will apply to all transfers of homes for tourist purposes that take place on or after 1 January 2018.

The frequency of these returns to the Treasury will be quarterly (they must be submitted during the calendar month following the end of each quarter). But this year, in order to facilitate the process, those corresponding to the first two quarters of 2018 may be submitted up until 31 December 2018. Those corresponding to the third and fourth quarter will have to be submitted before 31 October 2018 and 31 January 2019, respectively (…).

Original story: Expansión (by Juanma Lamet)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Excem Launches 2nd Socimi & Spends €22M On 1st Asset In Madrid

31 July 2017 – Eje Prime

Excem is on a roll. The company has just launched its second Socimi, Sociedad de Inversión Turística (Situr), dedicated to hostels and tourist apartments. The group, led by the Hatchwell family, will invest €250 million on the launch of this new investment vehicle, which will be led by Amir Yerushalmi, former director of the US fund Gaia. Moreover, the new entity has just acquired its first asset in Madrid for €22 million.

In March, as Eje Prime announced, the company activated its second company specialising in hostels for young people, whereby following the roadmap drawn by the group when it proposed the project, which also includes the creation of a third Socimi specialising in assets destined for use as co-working spaces.

The company constituted the hostel business, which operates under the name Excem Capital Partners Hospitality, and which at the time had just one administrator, Philip Hatchwell Altarar.

The investment to be undertaken by this second Socimi will amount to €250 million between now and 2018, approximately. The company has set itself the objective of owning 3,500 beds in a dozen buildings, primarily in Madrid and Barcelona, as well as in other tourist cities around the country.

Excem’s second project responds to a “latent demand”, according to the company, which maintains that each year young people from all over the world spend more than $230,000 million travelling and that there are only six companies in the world specialising in offering them high-quality accommodation at competitive prices.

With the company structure already in place, Excem has acquired its first asset through Situr. The company has purchased an asset located at number 3 on Calle Postigo de San Martín, in Madrid. That property, which is located opposite the Monasterio de Las Descalzas and Puerta del Sol, has a surface area of 4,000 m2 and 400 beds. Excem has spent €22 million on this purchase.

Excem’s second Socimi has been created with the aim of acquiring between ten and fifteen buildings, during the first phase and starting in Madrid, to build up a portfolio of 3,500 beds in the historical centres of the main cities in Spain, Europe and the USA, which will be managed as hostels.

In addition to this first asset in Madrid and a second committed property in Málaga, Situr has already chosen more than 30 buildings in main cities across Spain to continue its acquisition plan. According to the company, “we expect to undertake a capital increase for Excem Socimi Situr between September and December 2017 and start to debut on the MAB in 2019” (…).

Original story: Eje Prime (by C. Pareja)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Excem Capital Launches New Rental Home Socimi

20 February 2017 – El Economista

Excem Group has opened itself up to the real estate investment business targeting young people and has launched a new Socimi “Excem Capital Partners Sociedad de Inversión Residencial”, wich will debut on the stock market in September 2018. The aim of this new entity is to “professionalise” the “growing” demand for rental homes from students and young professionals.

In a statement, Excem Group said that its “Excem Real Estate” division was created with the aim of becoming a key player in the management of real estate investments aimed at young people. In addition, Excem will co-invest in one of the projects.

“Socimi Excem Inversión Residencial” began its activity with an investment capacity of €12 million and is currently undertaking a capital increase, through which it hopes to raise additional investment capacity of €35 million by April.

In addition, it plans to expand its presence to Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Santiago de Compostela, Salamanca, Valencia, Sevilla, Málaga, Córdoba and Granada.

The new Socimi will invest in homes for students and young professionals, as well as hostels and similar properties, to meet leisure demand, and co-working spaces so that young people can undertake their employment activities in collaborative environments.

Specifically, regarding the management of homes for students and young professionals, Excem has said that its objectives include managing professional leases, which is what students and young professionals from all over the world demand when they arrive in Spain.

In this context, the CEO of the Socimi, Antonio Mochón, said that there are increasingly more young people looking to set up home in Spain’s major cities. They are looking for work and some are even developing business projects that they created during their masters or degrees, and these people need “well-managed, high quality accommodation in central areas”.

Regarding the “hostels”, the firm wants to create a network of hostels and tourist apartments for travellers from all over the world with the aim of having more than 3,000 beds in the domestic market and with a view to “globalising rapidly”.

“The scarcity of professionalised supply at the global level makes this a large investment product with strong, safe projections, given the central locations in each city…and the high returns generated by the business”, said Excem.

Original story: El Economista

Translation: Carmel Drake

Colau Proposes Veto Of New Hotel Openings In Barcelona

24 February 2016 – Expansión

The Town Hall of Barcelona will not grant any more licences to permit homes to be used for tourism purposes in the Catalan capital and will only allow new hotels to be opened in the suburbs. At least that is according to the plan that the municipal government, led by Ada Colau (pictured above), which holds a minority, presented yesterday and which it is planning to adopt albeit preliminarily on 10 March. A period of public consultation and citizen participation will open on that date.

In order to achieve a “natural decline” in (the number of) hotels, hostels and B&Bs in the most central neighbourhoods, Colau is suggesting that, when businesses close, they should not be reopened again. This limitation will affect the districts of Ciutat Vella, Eixample, Gràcia, Poble Sec , the area surrounding Park Güell and Hospital de Sant Pau, as well as Vila Olímpica. In other words, neighbourhoods that are home to more than half of the city’s supply of tourist accommodation.

By contrast, licences will be granted in a second group of neighbourhoods, such as in Sants, Sant Gervasi, Sant Martí, the south of the Sant Andreu district and El Clot. And new hotels may be opened in the neighbourhoods to the North of the city, as well as in those that are undergoing urban development, namely: la Sagrera, 22@ and La Marina de la Zona Franca.

Moreover, new hotels may not be opened in buildings destined for residential use or in streets that are less than eight metres wide.

This proposal, which comes after an annual moratorium that has prohibited the construction of hotels, will be debated tomorrow by industry players, who yesterday rejected the intentions of Ada Colau and her team. The Hoteliers’ Guild asked that continuity be given to projects that have already been approved and affected by the moratorium, and it defended that “hotel growth” be allowed in the city by consensus.

Meanwhile, the Association of Tourist Apartments in Barcelona (la ‘Asociación de Apartamentos Turísticos de Barcelona’ or Apartur) said that “the worst way to fight against the illegal supply (of tourist accommodation) is to freeze licences” and it urged Colau to change her plans.

Original story: Expansión (by David Casals)

Translation: Carmel Drake