- Japan Airlines subsidiary plans to open 7 inns totaling 2,848 rooms in China, Vietnam and United Arab Emirates over next 2 years.
- Accor opens 400th lodging in Europe.
- Extended stay hotels outperforming big-name inns.
- Occupancy and revenue down worldwide, STR notes.
- Industry's decline may have hit bottom, Hotel Pulse Index hints.
(TOKYO, JAPAN) -- JAL Hotels Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Japan Airlines plans to open seven hotels totaling 2,848 rooms in China, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates over the next two years.
Nikko Hotels International, operated by JAL, is developing the properties.
Hotels scheduled to open in 2010 are 471-room Hotel JAL Tower Dubai; the 388-room Hotel Nikko Shanghai and the 500-room Hotel Nikko Wuxi.
Heading the 2011 opening list is the 443-room Hotel Nikko Xiamen in Xiamen, a city with a population of three million located in the southwestern province of Fujian overlooking the Taiwan Strait.
Other hotels with 2011 opening dates include the 300-room JAL Bahrain Resort & Spa in Bahrain; the 335-room Hotel Nikko Saigon in Vietnam; the 411-room Nikko Guangzhou.
(PARIS, FRANCE) -- Accor's Etap Hotel brand has opened in Verdun, France, marking the Paris-based hotel company's 400th property in Europe.
The 70-room Etap Hotel Verdun offers room rates beginning at 44 euros (US $63.) One euro was worth $1.44 U.S. on Dec. 28.
In a prepared statement, Accor officials say franchising is a driving force behind the Etap banner's expansion. Etap Verdun is the brand's 200th franchised unit to open in Europe, bringing the total percentage of Etap Hotels operated under franchising agreements to 50 percent.
The franchise network comprises 34,000 rooms in 10 countries. They are Austria, Belgium, France, Germany Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Accor officials say their goal is to expand the network to more than 500 hotels and 45,000 rooms in about 20 countries by 2011.
(NEW YORK, NY) -- Extended stay hotels have surfaced as the lone bright spot in an otherwise clouded lodging market in 2009, according to Chad Church, manager, Industry Research at STR and a HotelNewsNow.com columnist.
While this segment often has targeted the business traveler, leisure travelers now are looking to extended stay for the value and convenience, Church says.
"Because upscale extended-stay hotels often provide a complimentary hot breakfast and light dinner, along with full kitchens in room and a common area, leisure travelers are beginning to recognize the benefits," Church points out.
Most major hotel companies offer at least one extended-stay brand, and if year-to-date 2008 room-supply growth is any indication, many hotel developers feel that the segment has a promising future.
Nationwide, the hotel industry registered a 2.6 percent year-to-date room-supply growth rate through November 2008 versus the extended-stay growth rate of 9.2 percent.
Demand for extended-stay hotels also has outpaced the total industry average. While the industry at large has experienced a decline in demand of 1.5 percent year-to-date through November, the extended-stay segment grew room demand by 3.5 percent.
"The illustrated chart tells an interesting story with the 12-month moving average for demand across extended stay segments and non-extended stay hotels in the U.S., " adds Church.
(NEW YORK, NY) -- Attendees at the recent 31st Annual New York University International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference expected to hear discouraging news about the lodging markets and they got it.
Mark Lomanno
United States, the United Kingdom, Middle East/Africa region and Asia-Pacific region show double-digit RevPAR decreases for April 2009 year to date. The U.K. is holding up best on room rate.
Lomanno reiterated from past conferences he expects the U.S. to be the first out of the downturn, but when that happens is up for conjecture, Higgins states.
Lommano told attendees that when contrasting this downturn with others, one of the most important differences is that as demand has declined at historically low rates, supply is still increasing.
The 12-month moving average supply growth peak will be at 2.9 percent during the next four months just as demand decline reaches near record lows of about -4.3 percent, Lomanno said. In 28-day moving averages, demand growth has been bumping along near -10 percent for the past four months.
"It's clear the demand bottom has been reached," he said.
Another noteworthy trend is the weakness of weekday performance, according to Lomanno. Year to date as of 23 May, total U.S. weekend percent change outperformed weekday percent change in all three key metrics: In closing, Lomanno noted the lack of supply growth during the next two years will work in favor of the hotel industry. "When demand rebounds, there won't be new supply to deal with," he said
When the U.S. hotel industry reaches a demand growth rate of +1.5 percent to +2 percent, it should have a positive impact on average daily rate, based on historical trends of the correlation of demand and ADR, Lomanno said.
(DURHAM, NH) -- Economic research firm e-forecasting.com in conjunction with Smith Travel Research announced that following a decline of 3.7 percent in March, HIP went down 1.1 percent in April.
HIP, the Hotel Industry's Pulse index, is a composite indicator that gauges business activity in the U.S. hotel industry in real-time. The latest decrease brought the index to a reading of 84.2. The index was set to equal 100 in 2000.
Looking at HIP's six-month growth rate, which historically has signaled turning points in U.S. hotel business activity, HIP went down by an annual rate of 21.4 percent in April, a slight improvement over March's 21.9 percent decline.
This compares to a long-term annual growth rate for the hotel industry indicator of 3.2 percent, the same as the 40-year average annual growth rate of the industry's gross domestic product.
"With April's reading of HIP, the hotel industry is creeping up to the weak performance of the industry during the recession in 1981-1982, which lasted 20 months.
Even still, there is some promise in April's reading as it appears the decline may have hit a bottom, looking at the six-month growth rate and monthly decline," notes Evangelos Simos, chief economist of e-forecasting.com.
The chance of business expansion was just 0.1 percent in April, with the risk of recession registering the maximum level at 99.9 percent.
Chad Church, manager of industry research at STR, adds, "This is along the lines of what was expected given recent employment figures and room demand declines seen over the previous month. It looks as though we've hit a trough.
"Now the question becomes how long the industry will drag the bottom."
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