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International News

Aman Resorts International

Meticulously designed to frame their natural settings, Aman destinations are renowned for space and privacy. Each welcomes guests as if to the home of a close friend, instilling a sense of peace and belonging amid some of the most diverse natural and historical landscapes. It is an approach that has changed little since 1988 when the first retreat was built on Phuket’s west coast. It was named Amanpuri, meaning ‘place of peace’, and Aman was born. Today, embracing 33 resorts, hotels, and private residences in 21 countries, Aman continues to seek out transformative experiences and awe-inspiring locations around the world. Ranked number 1 in the Top Luxury Hotel Brands 2018.

Create: Dec 17, 2018 Edit: Dec 18, 2018

Grace St. Moritz Switzerland

Grace Hotels acquired La Margna, a landmark St. Moritz property, built in 1906. The renovation and extension of an annex building will transform the property into the Grace St. Moritz and St. Moritz Residences. When it opens, the hotel will have 56 guest rooms and suites, plus 17 several serviced apartments with views of the lake. It will also have three restaurants. The spa will be redesigned and a new gym and swimming pool will be added. Ski facilities will also be upgraded. The hotel has been owned by the Schweizer-Pitsch family for 50 years, who are reportedly retiring from the hotel business. Construction is slated to continue on this property throughout 2019 and much of 2020 as well, with a targeted opening date of later that year.

Create: Dec 17, 2018 Edit: Dec 17, 2018

10 Finalists Announced in 1st UNWTO Tourism Startup Competition in Collaboration with Globalia

Hotel News - The 10 finalists will present their projects in January 2019 within the framework of Fitur in Madrid. The finalists were selected among 3000 projects from 132 countries: Awake (Colombia), By Hours (Spain), e-bot (Germany), The FreeBird Club (Ireland), Howazit (Israel), Kompas (UK), Pruvo (Israel), Refundit (Israel), Seevoov (Israel), Stay 22 (Canada). The collaboration between UNWTO and Globalia continues with regional competitions during 2019. The 1st UNWTO Tourism Startup Competition is a pioneering initiative that has identified emerging companies at the forefront of the transformation of the tourism sector and the promotion of innovation ecosystems through tourism. It is organized by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in partnership with Globalia, the leading tourism group in Spain and Latin America. The 10 finalists will present their projects within the framework of the Fitur International Tourism Fair (23-27 January 2019, Madrid, Spain) with the presence of global tourism leaders from the public and private sectors, as well as potential investors. The competition sought innovative startups capable of transforming the way people travel and experience tourism, while adhering closely to the principles of sustainability (economic, social, and environmental). “For the first time, we have positioned tourism in the global innovation agenda, a well-deserved place that reflects the weight and socio-economic impact of tourism,” said UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili. “The key is to connect the public and private sectors collaboratively, thus creating opportunities to share ideas and projects,” he added. Each project’s uniqueness, viability, potential impact, business model and scalability, along with the profile of the team, were the criteria for selecting the 10 finalists. “We have jointly created this pioneering public-private collaborative model in tourism as a global tourism group and we are delighted to spearhead this action alongside the World Tourism Organization, working together to lead the transformation of the tourism sector and fostering the global innovation ecosystem and its entrepreneurs,” said Globalia CEO Javier Hidalgo.

Create: Dec 17, 2018 Edit: Dec 18, 2018

Hotel Northland to take guests in 2019

Hotel News -- Restoring Green Bay's Hotel Northland is going to take a bit more time than expected, the hotel announced Friday. The project to restore the 90-year-old building as a hotel began in 2016. Searching for specific parts has drawn out the process, construction officials say. “Many of the hotel’s original architectural elements simply can’t be duplicated today causing us to scour the country and beyond for a variety of replacement parts and pieces,” explained Executive Vice President Kelly Schleif of Ganther Construction. Those challenges have prompted the hotel to take guests sometime next year, rather than by the end of 2018 as some had hoped. “We are going to take whatever time is necessary to finish it properly to make sure everything is exactly as everyone in the community expects it to be. And then we are going to open the doors," said General Manager John D. Williams. Williams is leading the project. Until then, the Poke the Bear restuarant at the hotel is set to open December 20 at 11 a.m. It will be open Tuesday through Saturday, serving lunch, dinner, and cocktails from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. The new bar and restaurant will expand its hours and days of service with the coming new year. Poke the Bear guests should enter at the hotel’s entrance at 304 N. Adams Street.

Create: Dec 16, 2018 Edit: Dec 17, 2018

Check out the top 5 ski hotels opening their doors in 2019

There’s a certain chic to the idea of a ski chalet, a resort on the cusp of a mountain where glamorous folks carve their way down black diamond runs all day and warming themselves with wine and hot beverages by a fire each night. These sorts of luxury accommodations are a backbone of the hospitality industry within some of the most popular travel destinations in the world, particularly in places like Europe and parts of North America. With their cache and relation to winter sports, they essentially never go out of style. It perhaps comes as little surprise that information from the TOPHOTELPROJECTS database shows that 2019 will be another great year for new ski resort properties across the globe. Without further adieu, here are five of the top ski hotels opening in 2019 and beyond, as per TOPHOTELCONSTRUCTION: Andermatt Swiss Alps Andermatt is a year-round destination in the heart of the Swiss Alps. The Andermatt Swiss Alps resort is currently being developed with the likelihood of opening in late 2018 or early 2019. The complete resort will include six 4 and 5-star hotels, 490 apartments in 42 buildings, about 25 chalets, convention facilities as well as an indoor pool and an 18-hole golf course. In addition, the Andermatt and Sedrun ski areas are being merged into the attractive Andermatt-Sedrun ski destinations. The first of the six hotels, the Chedi Andermatt, has been opened since December 2013. This project stands to yield 844 new rooms.

Create: Dec 15, 2018 Edit: Dec 16, 2018

Hotelchamp introduces AI Autopilot, aims to focus on personalized experience to take on Booking.com and Expedia

Hotelchamp, an Amsterdam-based startup has introduced a new technology called Autopilot. This new technology is set to revolutionize the way hotels think about their online guest experience. It is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) engine, which is trained to recognize and personalize the experience of visitors to a hotel’s website. Kristian Valk, the founder, and CEO of the Dutch startup Hotelchamp states that hotel websites provide a static experience for the visitors. This is bizarre given the different guests who visit these sites and their varied preferences. This is what the startup intends to change with the introduction of Autopilot. Without further ado, let’s see how Hotelchap aims to take over Booking.com and Expedia with its new AI feature. Hotelchamp intends to help hoteliers by providing a better experience to the guests. It is aimed at scaling up quickly and growing at a hyper-fast pace. Enhancing the experience of the guests comes with personalization. In fact, personalization is something that guests expect from hotels and it is a challenge to deliver that on a website in a meaningful way, claimed Valk. This is where AI comes to the picture. Artificial Intelligence can deliver a truly adaptive website experience, which is customized to every single visitor. It brings the right information or interaction to the right person at the right time, he added. The newly launched Autopilot is more than a chatbot. It customizes the static hotel websites by deploying a range of marketing techniques and tools. As it is seamlessly integrated, it offers a more lively, responsive and personalized experience. Furthermore, it guides guests throughout the direct booking process based on their requirements. Hotelchamp’s data science team has used their years of data and millions of A/B test impressions on developing Autopilot. They have used all these data to know what convinces guests to book directly. The new technology applies this knowledge against factors such as real-time data from the hotel’s website, best practices from thousands of hotels and GDPR-compliant visitor insights as well as behavior. Hoteliers just have to activate Autopilot with a single switch and the rest is assured.

Create: Dec 11, 2018 Edit: Dec 12, 2018

300 Room Hilton Garden Inn Washington D.C. Downtown Sold For $128 Million

Xenia Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (NYSE: XHR) today announced it has sold the 300-room Hilton Garden Inn Washington D.C. Downtown for $128 million, or approximately $427,000 per key. The sale price represents a 15.2x multiple and a 5.8% capitalization rate on the hotel's trailing twelve month Hotel EBITDA and net operating income as of October 31, 2018, respectively. "We are pleased to have completed the sale of Hilton Garden Inn Washington D.C. Downtown," commented Marcel Verbaas, Xenia's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "The sale of this select-service hotel at an attractive valuation further exemplifies our dedication to upgrading the quality of our portfolio by making targeted investments and completing selective dispositions consistent with our long-term investment strategy of primarily owning high-quality luxury and upper upscale hotels in top 25 U.S. lodging markets and key leisure destinations." After the completion of this disposition and the addition of the recently acquired Park Hyatt Aviara Resort, Golf Club & Spa, Xenia's portfolio consists of 40 high-quality hotels located in strong lodging markets with a diversity of demand generators, with its 11 luxury hotels and 27 upper upscale hotels representing 24% and 72%, respectively, of its total room count. "We remain bullish on the long-term strength of the greater Washington D.C. market, and particularly the Northern Virginia market, as evidenced by our acquisition of The Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City, in Arlington, Virginia, in 2017 and our continued ownership of the recently renovated Lorien Hotel in Alexandria, Virginia. We expect both hotels to benefit greatly from the vibrant economic climate in the area, including the recently announced addition of one of Amazon's headquarter locations," said Mr. Verbaas. "However, this sale represents another step in the evolution of our portfolio as we continue to upgrade the quality of our asset base while opportunistically harvesting value through timely dispositions. With the completion of this disposition, we have created additional balance sheet flexibility to take advantage of on-strategy acquisition opportunities as they arise." Proceeds from the sale will be utilized for general corporate purposes which may include debt repayments, acquisitions consistent with the Company's long-term strategy, and share repurchases under the Company's existing authorization..

Create: Dec 11, 2018 Edit: Dec 11, 2018

Saudi government paid for rooms at Trump's DC hotel

A lobbying firm backed by Saudi Arabia booked hundreds of rooms at the Trump International Hotel in Washington shortly after the 2016 election, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. The firm, Qorvis/MSLGroup, "has long represented the Saudi government in the United States," according to the Post. The group booked nearly 500 nights at the hotel to house US military veterans who were invited to DC to lobby against a law the Saudis opposed, the Post said, citing veterans and organizers of the trips. "In all, the lobbyists spent more than $270,000 to house six groups of visiting veterans at the Trump hotel, which Trump still owns," the paper said. Although the bill for the rooms was footed by the Saudis, only American veterans stayed in them during trips in December 2016 and January and February 2017, according to the paper. The Post reported that veterans were recruited to lobby lawmakers against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which "opened the door to costly litigation alleging that the Saudi government bore some blame" for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some of the veterans, according to the paper, didn't know they were staying in rooms paid for by the Saudis. "It made all the sense in the world, when we found out that the Saudis had paid for it," Henry Garcia, a Navy veteran from Texas who went on several of the trips, told the paper. During previous trips, the firm had booked rooms at a hotel in Virginia, the Post reported. But lobbyists, according to the paper, said they decided to stay at the Trump-branded hotel because of its room availability and discounts it had at the time; the goal was not to patronize one of President Donald Trump's hotels. Citing financial records, the Post said that on average, rooms at the hotel went for $768 a night around the time of the visits. A representative from the hotel declined CNN's request for comment, and the Saudi Embassy in Washington and Qorvis/MSLGroup did not immediately respond to CNN's requests for comment. CNN previously reported on two lawsuits by DC and Maryland that claim Trump is in violation of the Constitution's ban on emoluments -- payments from foreign or domestic government entities to the president -- because of his continued interest in the Trump International Hotel. The Post reported that the payments by the Saudis have become "ammunition" in the suits. DC and Maryland have said the Trump International Hotel's operations put other nearby hotels and entertainment properties at a competitive disadvantage and that the Trump hotel got special tax concessions. The hotel won its lease on federally owned property in 2013, well before Trump's election. On Wednesday, subpoenas served to the Trump Organization and a dozen related business entities by the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Maryland included demands for tax documents, which, if obtained, could begin to fill out a picture of the President's finances by providing information about his main income sources.

Create: Dec 9, 2018 Edit: Dec 9, 2018

AccorHotels signs two new Vietnam properties for Mövenpick brand

AccorHotels has continued to expand its portfolio in Vietnam with the signing of two new stunning sea-facing properties. Slated to open in the fourth quarter of 2021, the opening of Mövenpick Resort Van Phong and Mövenpick Resort & Spa Halong Bay will add 525 rooms to the growing portfolio in the region. “The addition of Mövenpick Resort Van Phong and Mövenpick Resort & Spa Halong Bay will bring our total pipeline of Mövenpick properties to nine in Vietnam. “AccorHotels currently has 28 properties ranging from economy to luxury brands across Vietnam. “We look forward to bringing the brand’s signature Swiss hospitality to a variety of alluring destinations across the region,” said Patrick Basset, chief operating officer for AccorHotels in upper north-east and south-east Asia and the Maldives. Vietnam was named among the destinations with the biggest year-over-year increase in international tourist arrivals at 29.1 per cent, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation’s report. This year, the number of foreign tourist arrivals to Vietnam in the first six months of 2018 surged 27.2 per cent year-on-year to 7.9 million. On July 1st this year, the Vietnamese government granted visa exemptions for tourists travelling from the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy for the next three years until June 2021. AccorHotels is the biggest international hotel operator in Vietnam with 6,101 rooms across a wide spectrum of brands. The group will be opening another 13 hotels across the country in the next two years, bringing the total portfolio to 41. Nestled on a pristine stretch of coast just 130 kilometres from Cam Ranh International Airport, Mövenpick Resort Van Phong features 200 rooms and suites plus 100 villas. Overlooking the turquoise sea, the brand beachfront resort features two restaurants, an outdoor pool, spa and fitness centre. Located in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Halong Bay in Northern Vietnam, the 325 room Mövenpick Resort & Spa Halong Bay offers convenient access to the area’s main tourist attractions and activities on Halong Road and Halong Bay Cruise Port. The resort features two restaurants, a rooftop pool and lounge that overlooks the spectacular views across the iconic, islet-studded bay, a spa and a fitness centre. MICE facility includes a 300-seater ballroom and a selection of meeting rooms

Create: Dec 6, 2018 Edit: Dec 16, 2018

Waldorf Astoria signs four-year partnership with Aston Martin

Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts has signed a four-year global partnership with Aston Martin Lagonda, bringing together two enduring icons of global luxury. From exclusive guest access to Aston Martin’s most recent cars, to bespoke drive and stay packages in some of the most sought-after destinations in the Waldorf Astoria portfolio, the collaboration combines the exceptional standards of sophistication and service that are at the heart of both brands. “Aston Martin Lagonda was a natural choice for a partnership of this magnitude,” said Dino Michael, global head, Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Hilton. “At Waldorf Astoria, experience and service are at the core of everything we do, and this partnership offers a rare opportunity for our guests to live unforgettable at our properties around the globe.” Beginning in 2019, Waldorf Astoria Driving Experience weekends will present hotel guests with a variety of Aston Martin’s latest models to sample along carefully tailored routes. These bookable sessions will be led by Aston Martin’s team of professional drivers, giving Waldorf Astoria guests an expertly curated opportunity to explore the unmatched performance, refined craftsmanship and exhilarating driving sensation delivery by Aston Martin. Simon Sproule, president, Aston Martin Partnerships, said: “This partnership opens both brands up to new and exciting opportunities. “Aston Martin Lagonda and Waldorf Astoria share a passion for creating beautiful experiences for our customers, rooted in the joy of travel and discovery. “Together, we can create memorable journeys that combine the best in global hospitality and driving pleasure.”

Create: Dec 6, 2018 Edit: Dec 8, 2018

Marriott sued hours after announcing data breach

Hours after announcing a data breach on Friday, two Oregon men sued international hotel chain Marriott for exposing their data. Their lawsuit was followed hours later by another one filed in the state of Maryland. Both lawsuits are seeking class-action status. While plaintiffs in the Maryland lawsuit didn't specify the amount of damages they were seeking from Marriott, the plaintiffs in the Oregon lawsuit want $12.5 billion in costs and losses. This should equate to $25 for each of the 500 million users who had their personal data stolen from Marriott's servers in the breach announced last week, on Friday. The two Oregon plaintiffs told a local newspaper, that they view the $25 as a minimum value for the time users will spend canceling credit cards due to the Marriott hack. The Maryland lawsuit was filed by Baltimore law firm Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, according to a press release.

Create: Dec 3, 2018 Edit: Dec 5, 2018

Centara Hotels signs for three new properties in Laos

Centara Hotels & Resorts has signed management agreements for three new properties with Asia Investment, Development & Construction Sole. The latter is a well-established enterprise in Laos. In the UNESCO World Heritage site of Luang Prabang, Centara plans to open an upper upscale Centara Grand Luang Prabang and a midscale Centra by Centara property, both near the town centre. The third property will be under Centara’s new lifestyle brand, Cosi, catering to the growing segment of connected, freedom-loving travellers. It will represent a unique offering in Vientiane, the Laotian capital. The management agreement comes as Laos launches ambitious new plans to promote tourism. In recent years, the government of the Lao PDR has come to regard tourism as a priority sector for driving socio-economic development. It hopes to attract five million visitors in 2018 and increasing numbers in the years ahead with a Visit Laos campaign under the slogan Simply Beautiful. The country’s picturesque mountains, atmospheric towns, and humble friendliness are being discovered by Thai, Chinese and Western visitors. And it has one factor particularly in its favour: superb value. According to a new report from the Swiss-based World Economic Forum, Laos ranks 14th among 136 countries in price competitiveness. “This partnership with AIDC is a great opportunity to expand our footprint into a distinctive country,” said Centara chief executive Thirayuth Chirathivat. “Laos is on the list of more and more travellers to this region, and we want to serve them with the distinct and varied accommodation options to match the travel experience they are seeking.” Luang Prabang is the well-preserved, old spiritual city at the confluence of the Khan and Mekong rivers. Although well-served by direct flights to its airport and modern amenities, it lives up to its World Heritage status with beautiful temples and traditional riverside life. Bicycles outnumber cars. Delicious baguettes, croissants, cafés and French restaurants hint at the French colonial history in both Luang Prabang and Vientiane. Pheutsapha Phoummasak, president of AIDC Laos said: “We are excited to partner with Centara to bring their trusted brands to these great cities and further promote the tourism potential of Laos. “Luang Prabang and Vientiane are very popular destinations for both Thai and international travellers thanks to their perfect blend of history, beautiful scenery and charming character.”

Create: Dec 3, 2018 Edit: Dec 3, 2018