China to Power Global Hotel Development in 2023

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

Oxford Industries is partnering with Lowe to revive the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa, in Indian Wells, California, which Lowe has owned since 2020. The two will spend $8 million renovating the property and adding several timely Bahama touches including a Tommy Bahama Restaurant and retail store. Lowe has already spent $10 million updating the property, which is open. When the latest round of upgrades is complete, the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa, in Indian Wells, California, will have 215 rooms including 23 suites, 35,000 square feet of meeting space and a spa.

In Chicago, a West Loop site that was supposed to be a hotel could instead be used for a high-rise apartment building under a new developer’s pitch. The Standard Hotel was supposed to bring 250 rooms, a fitness center, event space and multiple restaurants and bars to 1234 W. Randolph Street, all funded through real estate crowd-funding platform Prodigy, which filed for bankruptcy in 2021. Now, developers want to build apartments there.

Skift Take: Consumer brands like Tommy Bahama that have hotels as brand extensions are fascinating.

Monday

STR said during the seven-day Lunar New Year holiday period, China’s hotel average daily rate surpassed 2019 levels. STR, the gold standard for hotel performance benchmarking, said that, overall 36 of 43 markets in China saw growth in revenue per available room (RevPAR) when comparing the seven days to the holiday period in 2019. Hainan and Sanya shined the most. Other hot destinations included Xian, Quanzhou, and two cities in the Yunnan province: Lijiang and Xishuangbanna. Hong Kong on the other hand saw its RevPAR during Lunar New Year still well below 2019 levels, indexing at 52, despite a reopening of the border with Mainland China on January 8.

In the recently released China Construction Pipeline Trend Report from Lodging Econometrics, analysts report the country’s total hotel construction pipeline, at the close of the fourth quarter, stands at 3,581 projects/675,074 rooms. Projects presently under construction in China are at 2,618 projects/472,396 rooms. Projects scheduled to start construction in the next 12 months stand at 404 projects/79,048 rooms and projects in the early planning stage closed the quarter at 559 projects/123,630 rooms. Cities in China with the largest pipelines are Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Xi’an. Franchise companies topping China’s construction pipeline at the Q4 close are led by Hilton Worldwide with 680 projects/123,403 rooms, InterContinental Hotels Group with 454 projects/94,009 rooms, Marriott International with 370 projects/97497 rooms, Accor with 222 projects/39,141 rooms, and Jin Jiang Holdings with 177 projects/17,864 rooms. Hyatt ended the year with an all-time high development pipeline of 117,000 rooms, about 40 percent of which are in China.

Skift Take: China is set to be the biggest engine driving hotel rate growth, deals, and development in 2023.

Tuesday

The Omni Tempe Hotel at ASU is now accepting group booking requests before its opening on April 28. Located in the heart of downtown Tempe, Arizona, the hotel will feature nearly 36,000 square feet of flexible indoor and outdoor meeting space. It’s a $125 million investment in a public-private partnership with Arizona State University and the City of Tempe.

Ian Schrager and Ed Sheetz have stepped in to possibly partner with Chetrit Group, to rescue its landmark Bossert Hotel, located in Brooklyn Heights, New York, from foreclosure. According to the Commercial Observer, the joint venture is looking to raise $26 million to reposition and rebrand the property as Schrager’s Public Hotel. The deal is in the early stages, the Observer said.

Skift Take: For more on Omni, read: “Omni Hotels Is Investing Heavily to Become a Luxury Brand.”

Wednesday

Airbnb definitely got a better response from investors on their 4Q earnings report than traditional lodging analysts. Everyone agreed on the main takeaway: ABNB’s results, along with Marriott and Hilton’s, showed the demand has not slowed down like so many warned it would halfway through 2022. The debate is whether ABNB has its niche and that crowd is growing, or is the surge in bookings a reaction to consumers revolting against higher daily hotel rates. The main thing was that fourth-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization were way higher than expected, and the knock against ABNB had been bringing profits from the growing top line.

Nella Invest paid a record price of $67.8 million for the AC Hotel Biltmore by Marriott, in Phoenix, Arizona. Nella purchased the 160-room hotel from Holualoa Companies and LaPour Partners. The five-story hotel includes over 5,000 square feet of meeting space, a business center, fitness center, pool, retail shop, and laundry room.

STR reported China hotel RevPAR, the week ending February 11^th, was up 61.6% year over year. That was despite being up against a 54% comp result in 2022. When going up against the same week in 2019, pre-pandemic, RevPAR last week was up 1.3% despite tough Chinese New Year comps due to the timing of the holiday.

Accor-owned 21c Museum Hotels will open its tenth hotel by June: a 10-story lodging in St. Louis, Missouri with artwork in every room and more than 14,000 square feet of museum exhibition space at the 173-room boutique hotel, located in a 95-year-old former YMCA building.

Longitude and Flyover Developments will bring a unique experience to Branson, Missouri in the summer of 2023. The Fall Creek Inn & Suites is being renovated into the Ozarker Lodge. When the full transformation is complete this summer, the facility will feature 102 guestrooms, a coffee and wine car, a new pool, a play area for kids, and special cedar soaking tubs near Fall Creek.

A new hotel and convention center is coming to Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Doug Peterson purchased 5.7 acres of land on Cowboy Street from Butte County in late 2022. The hotel will have 72 units and a large indoor pool. The convention room will hold 300 people and there will be a smaller meeting room that can hold 50. DA Peterson Company, LLC is on its way to breaking ground in the spring.

Skift Take: For more on Airbnb, read: “Airbnb Notches First Full-Year Profit.”

Thursday

After four years of London being on top as the five-star hotel capital of the world, the British capital has lost that title to Macau, China. Forbes Travel Guide’s 2023 Star Awards recognized Macau as having 22 five star hotels overall. London is in second place with 21 with no new five star hotel additions to the English capital this year.

The average occupancy rate of hotels in Taiwan was 48.06% last year, the fourth lowest in history, but the average room price per night rose to NT$4,195 (US$138), which is a record high.

STR said Australia’s hotel performance has begun to soar. STR said Sydney and Melbourne still lag. While all destinations benefited from ADR growth, each market was behind 2019 occupancy levels with NSW South Regional impacted severely by brushfires. Perth broke through 2019 occupancy levels. Around New Year’s, Sydney broke the A$700 room rate barrier for the first time. STR said they see an extremely strong start to the corporate travel season with their Forward STAR showing occupancy on the books in the first three weeks of February is double that of 2022 in Sydney.

Marriott International’s Element Hotels and Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts, together with The Ritchie Group and Garn Development, announced the opening of Le Méridien Salt Lake City Downtown and Element Salt Lake City Downtown. The dual-branded property commemorates Element’s milestone 100^th global opening and its first in Salt Lake City. The property also marks the first Le Méridien in Utah and the first hotel with an expansive rooftop bar in the market. This first-ever combination of the two distinctly unique brands is managed by Azul Hospitality Group. The property is located in The West Quarter, a new mixed-use development 

Skift Take: Macau appears to be making significant progress in diversifying away from being a casino destination with the help of luxury properties, entertainment venues, and other attractions.