Amadeus and Tripbam Point to Strong 2022 Finish for Hotel Bookings

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.

Sunday, September 25

Hotel Per La, a new lifestyle property in Los Angeles, CA, has opened. Housed in the former Giannini Building, the opening Hotel Per La Los Angeles follows a re-imagining by HN Capital Partners and Sage Hospitality Group. It features 241 rooms and suites, 10,000 square feet of event space, a ground floor restaurant & bar, a daytime café, and a rooftop bar. It’s a member of Preferred Hotels & Resorts.

Dynamic Group opened the first of three new hotels in Hamilton County this fall. The group is spending $49 million and adding 309 hotel rooms at its newest Tennessee hotels in East Ridge, East Brainerd and Hixson. Next year, Dynamic is planning to open other new hotels in Cleveland, TN, and Tampa, FL, as it continues to expand across the Southeast. The new four-story TownePlace Suites, in East Ridge, TX, is nearly identical to a 90-room version of the same hotel that the Dynamic Group hopes to open before the end of the year in Hixson, TX. In the next month or two, the company also plans to open a 131-room Element by Westin hotel in East Brainerd, TX. 

Skift Note: The pace of hotel openings is remaining strong across the U.S. this season.

Monday, September 26

Covid restrictions continue to fall like dominoes in Asia. Hong Kong came through with their plan to end their hotel quarantine policy, putting it into effect before October Golden Week, beginning today. Arrivals will no longer need to isolate themselves in a hotel, instead being on the honor system with a three-day self-monitoring period. There will be no more preflight PCR tests needed, just a rapid one. Under pressure from everywhere else, Macau’s chief executive finally threw the casinos a bone, saying Macau will reinstate both package tours to Macau and, more importantly, eVisas under the Individual Visit Scheme. They will not save Golden Week, saying it will go into effect in November. The first phase will reopen for four provinces and one city in Guangdong, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian. Japan confirmed they would lift Covid restrictions, relaxing border control measures to be on par with the US as of October 11. If they are copying the US Covid restrictions, just say there won’t be any. Japan will also resume visa-free travel and individual travel.

DBS said Singapore’s hospitality industry is on track for a “spectacular” second half of 2022. They referenced the robust lineup of events leading to room rates moving quickly to pre-pandemic levels and the average length of stay nearly doubling from 2019.

Twenty-Four Seven Hotels announced the addition of four California hotels to its ever-expanding West Coast portfolio, due to be operational by year-end. The hotels include the 128-room Hyatt House Sacramento/Midtown, the 112-room Hyatt Place Newark/Silicon Valley, the 90-room Hampton Inn & Suites Marina, and the 119-room Holiday Inn Express Chino Hills.

Skift Note: Cathay Pacific’s website crashed from all the demand from Hong Kong travelers seeking to go anywhere after a long pandemic. Expect a broad Asian wave of overseas travel to help keep global travel’s recovery humming through the rest of the year.

Tuesday, September 27

Truist reported on a conference call it held with corporate travel data company Tripbam. Takeaways included that any indications of a recession have not yet shown up in business travel bookings and pricing data. Tripbam believes 15% of business travel may never fully recover but that is better than the 20% they had forecast back in January. Global booking volumes as of mid-September have been stagnant the past several months and are running down 15% versus comparable 2019 levels and closer to down 25% for the US. Room rates are tracking up 5% from 2019 levels. Looking forward to 2023, Tripbam thinks corporate rate negotiations could wind up with a 5%-8% year-over-year increase. Finally they think the technology sector remains a substantial drag on the overall pace of recovery, especially in the US and even more specifically for the San Francisco hotel market.

Evercore ISI Group upped its rating on Hyatt to Outperform from In Line. Their price target is $100.

Margaritaville announced that the Bolivar Beach Club & RV Resort, located in Crystal Beach, TX, is set to become Camp Margaritaville RV Resort Crystal Beach by winter 2022. The Bolivar Beach Club is currently undergoing renovations to fully embrace Camp Margaritaville’s signature experiences. 

Skift Note: Tripbam has especially good data as it sees a broad cross-section of travel reservations and activity by corporations, mid-sized businesses, and startups.

Wednesday, September 28

Dajia Insurance Group Co has put three hotels in the US up for sale, hoping to generate US$1.3 billion to take advantage of an expected surge in leisure travel and resort business. The Wall Street Journal reported Dajia put up for sale the Montage in Laguna Beach, California; the Four Seasons resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; and the Four Seasons in Scottsdale, Arizona. BofA Securities and Eastdil Secured LLC are marketing the hotels on behalf of the seller. The three properties are part of Dajia’s Strategic Hotels & Resorts portfolio. Dajia is the company that took over most of the operations of China’s Anbang Insurance Group. 

Red Roof announced that concrete had been poured and construction has begun on a new HomeTowne Studios by Red Roof in Bradenton, FL. The 124-room hotel is the first new-build property for HomeTowne Studios by Red Roof, which has already converted nearly 70 hotels to the brand. The Bradenton property is owned and will be operated by Dhruv Management. The new hotel is expected to open in 2023 or early 2024.

Skift Note: The financial crisis in China is pressuring some conglomerates there that own travel assets to shed them.

Thursday, September 29

After an outstanding summer of travel, Amadeus’ Agency360 and Demand360 data sources are showing strong recovery indicators for the remainder of 2022. Amadeus Demand360 business intelligence data reveals that average daily rates continue to trend positively for the fall season, exceeding 2019 for the remainder of 2022. For group travel, global ground occupancy is consistently between 1-2% of pre-pandemic levels for the remainder of 2022 as the conference sector starts to rebound.  Amadeus’s data shows that group bookings are now also starting to extend more confidently into 2023, with 4.3 million bookings already made for H1 2023. 

The St. Regis Jakarta is set to debut on November 10, 2022, within Jakarta, Indonesia’s Golden Triangle District. The hotel will have 254 guest rooms and 28 signature suites. The St. Regis Jakarta will be home to eight culinary concepts, 2,762 square meters of flexible function space and all the St. Regis luxury amenities and signature rituals.

IHG Hotels & Resorts announced the signing of a management agreement with Saudi Investment Group and Marketing Co, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ghazzawi Group, for its second Hotel Indigo in Jeddah. Hotel Indigo Jeddah will open in the first quarter of 2028 with 267 hotel rooms and 173 serviced apartments. 

Skift Note: Amadeus’s business intelligence data goes beyond what it sees in its own distribution business, giving it a wide picture of trends. The continued recovery in group travel is a relief as leisure travel may hit a peak given inflation and other financial uncertainties.