Club Med Resorts Are Bouncing Back

Here are some excerpts from Daily Lodging Report from the past week. If you’re not a subscriber, you should be. Get news on hotel deals, development, stocks, and career moves. Sign up here, now.

Sunday, June 26

Fosun Tourism Group reported progress for international brands, including Club Med. As of April 16, the cumulative bookings for Club Med for the second half of 2022 have already exceeded that of the same period in 2019 by 3%. Club Med plans to open Kiroro, its third resort in Hokkaido. In March 2022, after two years of closure, Club Med Bintan and Phuket welcomed their first group of guests since the pandemic. The opening of Cherating Beach Resort, Malaysia on April 1, also began to receive tourists. Club Med Bali has also resumed operations, marking the last resort to re-open in the Asia-Pacific region.. In addition, a brand new hotel operated by the brand in Greece’s tourist island Mykonos, will officially open in June this year. Similar to the overseas operations, resorts such as Club Med Changbaishan and Club Med Joyview Qiandao Lake have opened this year. Among them, Club Med Qiandao Lake commenced trial operations on 15 June. 

Skift Note: Club Med told Business Times Singapore that, over a three-year period, it will open 17 resorts and have 13 renovations or extensions. Between January to June of this year, it had a 95 percent increase in online visitors. All good signs.

Monday, June 27

Pebblebrook Hotel Trust has bought the Gurney’s Newport Resort & Marina in Newport, Rhode Island for $174 million.  The 257-room resort is located on Goat Island.

Radisson Hotel Group said their APAC Expansion Plan calls for an additional 1,700 hotels and resorts to its current portfolio of 400. The growth strategy includes a mix of organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, master license agreements and leases for key locations in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, and New Zealand.

Blackstone completed its acquisition of Crown Resorts Limited in Australia, the largest transaction date for the firm in Asia Pacific. The transaction comprises three premium resort and casino properties in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.

Pebb Capital and LeaseFlorida sold the historic Hampton Inn by Hilton at The Continental in Miami Beach for $43.9 million. The hotel was built in 1948 and features 100 rooms and a pool, located at 4000 Collins Avenues, just one block from the beach. The joint venture spent $25 million renovating the Hilton hotel after buying it in 2016. The buyer of the hotel was not disclosed. The sale comes a month after the 339 room Confidante Miami Beach, located right across the street, sold for $232 million.

Indian Hotels Company announced the signing of a new 33-room SeleQtions hotel. The current Baragarh Resort & Spa, located at Kullu-Manali Marg in Himachal Pradesh, will be converted to an IHCL SeleQtions resort post upgrades. IHCL signed a management contract with the Khullar’s. The property will open in 2023 and be IHCL’s second hotel in Himachal Pradesh, with a third under development.

Banyan Tree Group announced its expansion into Japan. Banyan is partnering with Wealth Management Group on the launch of Dhawa Yura and Garrya Nijo Castle earlier this month. Banyan Tree Higashiyama and Banyan Tree Ashinoko Hakone are set to open now through 2026.

Skift Note: Asia is where the growth is for hotel development.

Tuesday, June 28

Robust hotel performance indicators for the four weeks ending June 11 point to optimism. STR expects a record-breaking summer. Thanks mostly to high ADRs (average daily rates), 86% of STR-defined U.S. markets posted a four-week index in RevPAR (revenue per available room) that was above the matched 2019 period. Further, all but four U.S. markets recently had nominal average rates that exceeded 2019 levels, and 43 markets showed four-week average occupancy that matched or exceeded 2019 levels. Find full data at STR, CoStar’s hospitality analytics firm.

Skift Note: So far, so good on the hotel recovery in the U.S. despite consumer confidence hitting a 50-year low. Tourism Economics has also echoed the positivity.

Wednesday, June 29

Barclays Capital initiated coverage of the US gaming, lodging & leisure sector with a Positive view. For the lodging C-Corps, they believe upper chain scales have an attractive demand mix across higher-end leisure, where consumer travel spend will likely be more resilient amidst higher inflation and higher mix to group and corporate demand, which they are relatively upbeat on. They prefer Hyatt with the highest aggregate chain scale exposure, more operating leverage than C-corp peers to recovering group/business demand, and a longer-term shift towards asset-light, which should narrow its valuation discount over time. They are concerned over near-term new hotel construction/starts output and believe H also provides a growth profile less reliant on net unit growth over the next several quarters. They are Underweight Choice Hotels and Equal Weight Wyndham as they are avoiding lower-end leisure-heavy segment exposure as they believe lower-end consumer travel budgets will be exhausted post-summer and demand will slow into 2023. Barclays initiated with Overweight ratings on MAR, H, VAC, and HGV. They are Equal Weight on HLT, WH, and TNL, and underweight CHH and MTN.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation announced the opening of Caption by Hyatt Beach Street Memphis, marking the launch of Hyatt’s new lifestyle brand, Caption by Hyatt. The hotel is integrated into the historic William C Ellis & Sons Ironworks and Machine Shop as part of the One Beale mixed-use development. The property features Talk Shop at Ellis, serving as the Caption by Hyatt brand’s remixed and re-imagined hotel lobby experience. The indoor lounge area spills out into a patio and beer garden. Flexible meetings and event spaces include The Gathering Space, a glass-enclosed space, and a 1,000-square-foot courtyard area. 

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts unveiled RevlQ, a next-generation, cloud-based, mobile-first revenue management system designed to help franchisees further optimize their revenue strategies and row market share. Created in collaboration with lDeaS, RevlQ is built specifically for the needs of Wyndham franchisees and is designed to deliver top-tier performance while keeping control, flexibility and simplicity at the forefront. RevlQ, the company’s latest offering, delivers smart revenue management capabilities anytime, anywhere and on any device, with core benefits falling into three distinct categories: control, flexibility, and simplicity.

Duetto announced a record-breaking 83.8% increase in rooms signed in the calendar year 2021 versus the calendar year 2020. The record year saw growth from all four geographic regions Duetto operates in, with notable signings including: Selina in North America; Centro Hotels in EMEA; Park Royal Hotels in Latin America and Dusit Hotels & Resorts in APAC. The uptick in new hotels joining the Duetto platform correlates with the findings of Duetto’s market sentiment survey from earlier this year. The Revenue Management Outlook & Trends Survey 2022 revealed that 78% of hoteliers planned to increase their investment in hotel tech in the next three years. 

Skift Note: It’s interesting to get a fresh eye from investment analysts at Barclays at the big picture in lodging over the next year or so. New brands like Caption by Hyatt may play a role in the sector’s evolution.

Thursday, June 30

Either everyone is jumping the gun on what China is doing, or President Xi did not like the media and general public acting like he was blinking and backing down on his strategy. Xi declared Covid Zero the most “economic and effective” policy for China during a symbolic visit to Wuhan and cast the strategy as proof of the superiority of the country’s political system. Xi said relaxing Covid controls would risk too many lives, and China would rather endure some temporary impact on economic development than let the virus hurt people’s safety and health. Xi characterized Covid Zero as connected to the Communist Party’s “nature and purposes.” Remember that rally in travel stocks on the initial announcement of restriction changes? That is now a distant memory as Wednesday’s session showed the biggest decline in more than a month.

Skift Note: As usual, China follows its own path, given how it sees its unique circumstances. Hotel investors will simply have to accommodate the vision.