Sydell Group is trying to determine interest for NoMad from potential buyers, including major hotel operators such as Hilton Worldwide, sources told Bloomberg. International discussions about a potential sale are said to be ongoing.
NoMad currently has luxury properties in Las Vegas and London. It had opened its first hotel in Manhattan, just north of Madison Square Park, but that property has since closed.
Skift reached out to Sydell Group for comment but did not receive a response.
Dubai’s first and only Dorchester Collection hotel, called The Lana, has been delayed again. Announced in 2021 and expected to open the following year, the super-luxury city hotel has announced numerous opening date revisions since then.
February 2024 is the newest opening date and could be the real deal as it is also accepting bookings from that month.
Before March 2022, Dorchester’s page for The Lana contained the statement: “(Opening 2022) The latest gem in our collection is soon to be unveiled as a landmark of luxury in the heart of Dubai.”
The website later underwent a modification, announcing that the hotel’s unveiling would take place “by the end of 2022.” Come August 2022, the website underwent another alteration, with the expected opening date shifted to spring 2023. It then shifted one more to September 2023, before executives said it would, instead, open before the end of 2023.
When the hotel does open, it will add 225 rooms to the city, along with seven restaurants. It will become the operator’s first hotel in Middle East and Asia, joining a collection of legendary properties and celebrity haunts such as Hotel Eden in Rome, The Beverly Hills Hotel in LA and The Dorchester in London.
The Lana Rates
Including taxes and fees, rooms start from $1,390 a night, comfortably making it one of the most expensive hotels in the city.
Rates can reach more than $13,000 for the royal suite that sleeps five people.
The hotel is owned and developed by a local firm called Omniyat, a real estate major that also owns the ME Dubai hotel operated by Melia. The company also has a portfolio of Dorchester Collection-branded luxury residences, including The Vela connected to the hotel itself and standalone projects on Palm Jumeirah.
Dorchester Collection declined to comment when asked by Skift.
Even though the big MGM-Marriott loyalty & booking partnership that was announced earlier this year with much fanfare has been delayed until early 2024 — ostensibly due to MGM’s cybersecurity threat which derailed much of its business over weeks — MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle is very bullish about it.
In its Q3 earnings call earlier this week, Hornbuckle said that the company will begin to see the benefits of the partnership pretty quickly in 2024 soon after it launches. In response to an analyst question of whether this delay in launch means that MGM won’t see the incremental revenues in 2024 and whether the gains would be pushed to 2025, he said:
“No, I think it’s ’24 because I think the booking cycle for Las Vegas, even with this group [of Marriott Bonvoy users] because we’ve seen it obviously mirrored Cosmopolitan [which MGM now owns and has been part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection] is pretty much in line with everything else. They go a little earlier because they want to make sure they can use their points, et cetera. But there’s a clear window over the next couple of months. So once we launch it, we think it ramps fairly quickly.
And I think by the third and fourth quarter of next year, this time next year, we ought to be — have a real good feel for what it’s going to provide. The group activity that will be part of it is a little different discussion and we’ll take more time given the obvious nature and cycle of that business. And remember, I think the first year, we’re looking for $50 million to $75 million in incremental [revenues].
And there’s nothing to believe even despite the delay candidly, there’s nothing to believe we won’t recognize or realize that.”
Hidden in Tripadvisor’s latest earnings from earlier this week was some updates on its AI-based trip planning feature that it launched in July, along with some concrete numbers on performance of AI-assisted travel planning.
In the earnings call, CEO Matt Goldberg said that the company has seen much higher conversions (and revenues) from people who use their Generative AI trip planning tool.
From the earnings call transcript, this extract below has all the details of Tripadvisor’s early experiments with public AI tools, use in creating content, summarize reviews and for customer service, I have highlighted the important parts and metrics in bold.
“At our last call, we mentioned the promising early feedback from a significant upgrade to trips our core trip planning and itinerary product including a new generative AI powered itinerary feature. We’re still early in the journey and are iterating continuously, but we’re seeing compelling results. During the first three months in beta, members who created itineraries returned at a much higher rate within the first seven days than members who hadn’t created an itinerary and we’ve observed that higher return rate continuing for the full month thereafter as well. Importantly, members who build an itinerary also generate on average three times higher revenue than the average Tripadvisor member and the average member already monetizes at approximately 10 times the rate of non-members. We believe the initial data is a good indication of early product market fit and we’re on a plan to launch this full trip planning and itinerary product on our mobile app, on iOS and Android this quarter.
Another stated priority is to drive deeper engagement with travelers leveraging our unique content and data at scale. We continue to deliver progress in Q3, let me share two examples. First, we’ve been leveraging generative AI and machine learning tools to bring together guidance from our community and our editorial team on a set of our most popular destination pages, think New York City, Paris, and so on. Curating fresh, relevant content on these pages is driving over 15% more saves so travelers are engaging more frequently by adding a desired hotel, restaurant, or experience they discovered through our product to the trip they’re planning. Second, we recently rolled out a test across tens of thousands of hotels that uses Gen AI to summarize reviews and deliver clear insights to travelers on key quality attributes as they consider their choices.
Let me give an example, for me the single most important factor in booking a hotel is that I can get a quiet night sleep. We’re now leveraging our data to provide a clear signal about the noise level of a particular hotel, along with other critical qualities we know are important to travelers like atmosphere, service, value, and more. Gen AI provides the perfect way to summarize content at scale, trust is still at the center of why people come to us, so in this feature we share the specific underlying reviews from our community of travelers that were used to generate each insight and provide a direct path to go deeper on what matters most to the traveler. These examples are just a few of the many encouraging proof points that our teams are driving, which gives us conviction in our strategic direction, prioritization, and sequencing. But we know this only matters if it translates the financial impact over time, and we’re also pleased with the leading indicators we’re getting on monetization.
I mentioned before the significantly higher revenue we see among users who create a trip. As these users build an itinerary and engage more deeply they’re exposed to monetizable hotel and experience recommendations to relevant ads from our partners, all of which were increasingly integrating directly into this user journey. And the refreshed content on our destination pages is a perfect point in the journey to surface these options to a traveler. We’ve already observed double-digit increases in experiences revenue on the pages with these content enhancements and we are just beginning to scale.”
The Sedona Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau has formed a business improvement district with nine local hotels to fund its tourism promotion efforts, Skift has learned.
Earlier this year, the tourism bureau severed its partnership with the City of Sedona because its local government wouldn’t allow it to spend lodging tax funds on tourism promotion. The Sedona City Council put the breaks on it in 2021 because residents were frustrated with overtourism.
Under Sedona’s business improvement district, member hotels collect assessment fees from guests. The collected funds must be put toward programs and activities that support its members.
By spring, the tourism bureau expects it will have raised enough funds to develop an “ambitious” summer advertising campaign, the bureau said. The founding members will have to approve it, and they will receive special promotion visibility. The founding hotels combined consist of 800 rooms.
1 Hotels has launched its first European property, with 1 Hotels Mayfair now open in London, standing as the brands flagship location in the United Kingdom.
Credit: Mikkel Vang
According to a release, a commitment to sustainability and biophilic design principles have been the ‘driving force’ behind the design of the property, with the new location meeting BREEAM Excellent standards – a rating used to measure the sustainability performance of buildings.
The nature inspired hotel features a number of naturally sourced design features, including a ‘living wall’ – featuring more than 1,300 individual plants – along with reclaimed Yorkshire dry-stone walls, private bars that have been hand-wrapped with woven jute and vanities crafted from Welsh slate.
“We are thrilled to bring our brand’s one-of-a-kind blend of nature and culture, sustainability and luxury, and a holistic focus on health and wellness to what has been a hub of heritage for generations,” said 1 Hotels founder and SH Hotels & Resorts chairman, Barry Sternlicht.
“We designed this soothing urban oasis as a fresh, fashionable, contemporary take on timeless traditions. With Green Park as our backdrop, we are focused on reconnecting our guests and visitors to the wonder and magic of London’s natural, cultural, and historical landmarks in an atmosphere that is as relaxed as it is refined.”
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The American Hotel & Lodging Association on Thursday joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other upset parties in filing a lawsuit in a federal court in Texas questioning the legality of a National Labor Relations Board “joint-employer” regulation announced on October 26
Until now, the law treats a company as “a joint employer” only if it has “substantial direct and immediate control” over a set of workers. Under the new federal regulation— set to go into effect the day after Christmas — a company can be considered to be a joint employer and thus must bargain collectively.
The American Hotel & Lobbying Association (AHLA), which is the largest lobbying body for the hotel sector in the country, opposes the regulation partly because it would likely make hotel franchisors jointly liable for workplace matters at franchise locations even though franchisors have no control over franchise employees.
“The NLRB’s joint-employer regulation is all about coercing businesses to the bargaining table with workers they do not actually employ to increase unionization,” said AHLA President & CEO Chip Rogers. “To achieve this, the NLRB is intentionally taking a wrecking ball to one of America’s great economic engines—the franchise model.”
Legal knowledge source JD Supra said “The revised [NLRB] test borrows from the right to control standard that has historically been applied in determining whether a group of workers are independent contractors or employees under many state and federal wage and employment laws. Under that test for independent contractor status, a worker may be deemed an employee instead of an independent contractor if, under the parties’ contract, the company reserves the right to control the manner and method of performance, regardless of whether such control is exercised.”
Lyft launched an on-time pick-up promise when riders schedule an airport trip, and if the driver is 10 minutes or more late, the company pledges to shell out $100 in Lyft cash to passengers if they ended up needing to use another service such as Uber or a taxi.
Screengrabs of the Lyft app. Source: Lyft
“To help ensure all of your scheduled rides will be there when you need them, drivers can accept the ride in advance and they earn more on scheduled rides than standard rides,” Lyft stated in its announcement. “Scheduled rides are also the first priority to be matched to a driver. If you’re not picked up-on time for a scheduled ride to the airport, you’ll automatically get Lyft Cash credit.”
Lyft pledged to pay passengers $20 in Lyft cash if their scheduled ride arrives more than 10 minutes late; $50 if they still had not been match with a driver 10 minutes after the scheduled pickup, and an additional $50 if the driver was a no-show 10 minutes after the scheduled meet-up and passengers needed to take another service. They can submit a receipt that the took an Uber or another service by tapping help in the Lyft app.
Of course, you can only use the Lyft cash credit on a Lyft ride — but it’s the passenger’s compensation when forced to use another service when the Lyft driver is tardy or doesn’t show up.
Many U.S. customers can choose between taking Lyft, Uber, other rideshare services, and taxis so Lyft hopes the on-time pickup promise will sway passenger decisions.
Lyft also introduced a service where customers can schedule rides up to 30 days ahead and can lock in that price.
The Danish government unveiled on Thursday its plan to impose a roughly $14 tax on air travel to help fund its aviation industry’s sustainability efforts.
Danish officials said roughly half of the expected annual proceeds of $172.3 million (1.2 billion krone) will go toward its aim of having domestic flights use only green fuels by 2030. The government plans to gradually phase in the passenger tax from 2025.
The tax will be roughly $9 for travel in Europe, $34 for medium-distance flights, and $56 for long-distance by 2030.
“The aviation sector in Denmark must – just like all other industries – reduce its climate footprint and move towards a green future,” said Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities Lars Aagaard.
