hotel to a 275-bed urban property, and being part of Accor gives us exposure to a lot of corporate accounts,” says Jupiter’s CEO Shane Harris. “Our intention is to look for other brands,
such as the two recent Holiday Inn acqui- sitions. We are a good midmarket hotel company, and midmarket hotels are seeing a revival,” he says. The company’s target is 50 properties over five years. It is a slow process. “When you are at the investment stage, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get your prince,” says Harris. Q Hotels is also investing, to the
tune of £50 million, to 2017. “We are upgrading bedrooms, bathrooms, furnish- ing, air-conditioning and conference and events spaces,” says group operations manager Joanne Barratt. “And we have spent more than £2.2 million increasing available wifi bandwidth.” And Macdonald Hotels has introduced complimentary
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high-speed fibre optic internet across its portfolio. Larger groups are also courting business
travellers. “On a regional level, IHG invites small groups of senior thought-leaders in travel and procurement to engage with C-suite executives from IHG,” says chief development officer for Europe, Rob Shep- herd. “The purpose is to introduce concepts before they go to market, seek insights from travel buyers and discuss topical issues.”
TRENDS The predominance of independent stock feeds an increasing booking trend. “People want to stay in hotels which are beyond the cookie cutter,” says chairman of HVS’s London office, Russell Kett. Starwood’s W and Aloft, Marriott’s Edition and IHG’s purchase of Kimpton all play to the theme. “I think we will see a lot more of that,” he says.
Kett also thinks there is more con-
solidation to come. “Deals are taking a little longer to come to fruition and that
is set to continue,” he says. “We saw Ð28 billion-worth of hotel transactions in 2015 and our prediction is somewhere between Ð11 and Ð15 billion for 2016 in Europe.” He puts this down to a decelera- tion in the growth of China’s GDP, terror- ism in Europe, the American elections and Brexit. On the following pages is a round-up of regional hotel activity across the UK. This is not exhaustive but gives a snapshot of what is going on where. There is considerable investment
taking place across the UK, leading to better quality infrastructure and services that can only benefit travel buyers; and where there is oversupply, a positive impact on rates makes 2017 look promis- ing for buyers.
BBT November/December 2016 73
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