Tag: hotel group

Palladium Hotel Group Forecasts Revenues of €600M+ in 2017

4 December 2017 – Expansión

The hotel group Palladium expects to record revenues of more than €600 million this year, although that figure is lower than initially expected due to the renovation of several hotels and the impact on demand of the hurricanes in the Caribbean and the crisis in Cataluña. According to the Director-General of Palladium, Abel Matutes Prats (pictured below), the final result will depend on the firm’s performance during the last stretch of the year, after two strong months in the Caribbean. The hotel chain owned by the Matutues family has registered a good season in Spain, in particular in the urban segment.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake

Palladium To Invest €450M In New Openings & Renovations

23 January 2017 – Cinco Días

Palladium, the hotel group controlled by the Matutes family, is planning to invest more than €450 million in new openings and renovating its existing establishments, both in Spain as well as in the Caribbean.

The hotel chain, which recorded a turnover of €558 million in 2016, up by 14% compared to the year before, said that it had completed a good year. It also appeared optimistic about the performance of the holiday market in Spain this year, especially in the Balearic Islands, where it has a larger market share.

Abel Matutes Prats, CEO of the company, said that the firm’s growth strategy in terms of number of hotels now involves managing establishments owned by third parties. “We are ready to grow quite a lot in the urban and holiday segments as a hotel manager”, he said.

The company, which has signed an agreement with Hard Rock to bring the hotel brand to mainland Spain – the US firm already has two establishments on the islands, one in Ibiza and another in Tenerife – acknowledges that it has some plans on the table that have not been finalised yet. Not so long ago, Hard Rock was mentioned as the best positioned player to manage the hotel in Edificio España in Madrid.

“There are a couple of hotels in the pipeline, but nothing has been decided yet”, said Matutes Prats, who defends this alliance as “a well-matched marriage”, which is choosing to focus on its latest addition, the opening in Tenerife, at the moment, but which is not ruling out future developments in urban destinations.

The businessman highlights the arrival of Palladium in Asia. “One day we will have to make the jump, but right now it does not form part of our plans. When we move over there, it will be to launch something big”, he said.

Original story: Cinco Días (by L.S.)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Catalan Hotel Group Buys Eurocity Building For €8M

20 October 2016 – El Día

A Catalan hotel group has acquired the Eurocity building, located in the Olympic Village in Barcelona, to convert it into a hotel.

According to the real estate consultancy Tasinsa, which has advised both parties to the operation, the building has been acquired for €8 million.

The property, located on Avenida Icària, was constructed in 1992, has a surface are of 4,800 m2 and used to be owned by the insurance company Mapfre.

Original story: El Día

Translation: Carmel Drake

JLL: Hotel Inv’t Amounted To €1,030M In First 7M 2016

3 August 2016 – Expansión

(…). Hotel investment in Spain amounted to €1,030 million during the 7 months to July 2016, which represents a 41% decrease compared with the same period last year. Nevertheless, it also represents the second highest figure recorded since 2007, according to a report prepared by JLL.

Specifically, as at 31 July this year, 81 (hotel) assets had been sold, for a combined investment volume of €1,030 million through 68 operations, compared with 92 assets sold as at July last year, with a combined investment volume of €1,752 million through 55 operations.

The most noteworthy operations so far this year have featured: Hotel Villa Magna, which was acquired by the Turkish group Dogus for an estimated €180 million; and Hotel Pullman Barcelona Skipper, which was purchased by the Saudí Royal Family for €90 million.

Excluding those two operations, Spanish investors accounted for 80% of the total volume invested in Spain.

In this vein, the most active investors in the hotel market have been the investment fund HI Partners (a subsidiary of Sabadell) and Hispania, which have completed transactions amounting to €110 million and €71 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, on the sell side, hotel groups have accounted for 41% of all hotel assets sold, followed by real estate companies (26%) and private investors (13%).

For Manuel Climent, Vice-President of JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group, the decrease in investment this year reflects, in part, the lower number of hotel portfolio transactions sold this year, after they soared in Spain in 2015.

Specifically, last year, up to eleven portfolios were sold, containing 74 hotels in total, for a combined investment volume of €1,450 million. So far this year, seven portfolios have been sold, containing 21 hotels and a combined investment of €174 million.

Climent forecasts that activity will intensify in terms of hotel portfolio transactions during the second half of the year, with HI Partners and Hispania leading the way.

For Climent, the moratorium in Barcelona has caused lots of investors who had purchased assets with a view to converting them into hotels, to become more cautious again. By contrast, some owners have put their hotel assets up for sale as they think that now is a good time to sell, given the lack of supply, which is raising prices in a space that is still very attractive for tourism.

The Vice-President of JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group considers that, although some important transactions are expected to be closed before year end, total investment volumes will fall below last year’s record of €2,740 million.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Quonia Buys Hotel Internacional In Barcelona For €11.25M

19 July 2016 – La Vanguardia

(…). The Catalan Socimi Quonia, which debuted on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) on Monday, has acquired Hotel Internacional, located on Las Ramblas, 78-80, in Barcelona, for €11.25 million from the hotel group Husa, owned by the businessman Joan Gaspart.

In a statement, Quonia reported that the price includes the purchase of the property and its operating licence, and that the transaction has been advised by the firm Laborde Marcet. This hotel has a leasable surface area of 1,915 sqm; its upper floors are leased for hotel use, whilst its ground floor houses retail premises. The property was one of Husa’s last real estate assets in Barcelona, which is undergoing a major restructuring after emerging from complex bankruptcy proceedings.

Quonia debuted on the MAB on Monday at a price of €1.65 per share, which represents a market capitalisation for the company of €41.97 million. The Socimi holds a portfolio comprising properties leased for residential and commercial use located in Barcelona, Sevilla and Langreo (Asturias), with a total approximate gross leasable area (GLA) of 12,197 sqm, excluding one ground-level car park with 50 spaces and another underground car park with 93 spaces. (…).

Original story: La Vanguardia

Translation: Carmel Drake

Cinven Offers €1,300M To Outbid EQT In Auction For Hotelbeds

27 April 2016 – Expansión

The private equity firm Cinven, which has invested heavily in Spain over the last two years, may take a leap forward if its bid for the Hotelbeds group goes ahead. TUI AG put the company up for sale at the end of 2015.

Sources close to the sales process indicate that Cinven has put an offer on the table, which values the tourism company at €1,300 million. The Nordic fund EQT is also participating in the bidding and sources do not rule out the possibility of other interested groups participating in what now seems to be the final stretch of the sales process of the Hotelbeds Group.

The company, a subsidiary of the Germany group TUI AG, works with 75,000 hotels all over the world and offers rooms to tour operators and travel agents around the globe. Hotelbeds, which receives more than 25 million hotel bookings per year, is one of the companies that emerged from the tourism sector thanks to new technologies and it has high growth projections.

Entry into the hotel segment

This would be Cinven’s first major foray into the hotel segment, but it would represent a return to the tourism business. Cinven, a fund headquartered in London, was created in 1977; it went on to acquire Amadeus in 2005, together with BC Partners.

The tourism sector’s technology provider, which was acquired from the major European airlines, was then delisted. In 2010, Cinven and BC Partners returned the company to the stock exchange and sold their shares.

Since its creation, Cinven has made acquisitions amounting to more than €70,000 million, specialising, above all, in investments with a significant technological component and always with holdings that exceed €100 million. (…).

Meanwhile, Hotelbeds has been on the market since last Autumn. Financial sources valued it at around €1,000 million. TUI had hoped to complete the sales process during the first three or four months of the year, and so a final agreement could be very close. Nevertheless, the emergence of the fund EQT in the process will intensify the Hotelbed operation.

Similarly, financial sources do not rule out that other funds may be preparing their own competitive offers.

Diversified portfolio

EQT, of Swedish origin, has assets under management of €29,000 million and its investment portfolio is very varied. In Spain, it holds stakes in two companies, Islalink and Parkia, which operate in the telecommunications and car park sectors, respectively.

EQT opened an office in Madrid in the middle of last year with the aim of looking for new investments in the Spanish and Portuguese markets. The fund hired a specialist team led by Fernando Conte, the former Chairman of Iberia and the tourism group Orizonia.

At the beginning of February, EQT bought the Swiss tourism group Kuoni for more than €1,100 million and, according to sources in the sector, it plans to integrate that business with the Hotelbeds Group.

For TUI AG, the sale of this company will mean saying goodbye to the online sector to focus on its traditional businesses: hotels and cruises. During the year to 30 September 2015, TUI AG generated revenues of more than €20,000 million, with an EBITDA of €1,069 million, up by almost 23%. Its shares closed at €13.09 on the stock exchange yesterday, up by 0.47%.

Original story: Expansión (by M.Á.Patiño and Y.Blanco)

Translation: Carmel Drake