Atlas in the news

Los Angeles Times 06/28/17 Santa Monica Wants to Know Who Owns Its Popular Beachfront Hotels By Hugo Martin http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-santa-monica-anbang-20170628-story.html   The Waldorf Astoria New York, once a renowned symbol of luxury on Park Avenue, is being converted to luxury condominiums under its new owners, Chinese insurance giant Anbang Insurance Group. Labor union leaders and city officials in Santa Monica are now worried that the same fate could befall the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, a beachfront property purchased last year by the same Chinese firm. In a unanimous vote, the Santa Monica City Council instructed its lawyers early Wednesday morning to draft legislation that would force hotels in the city to disclose their ownership and look into ways to keep hotels from being converted to other uses. The purpose is to protect hotel jobs and tax revenue from the beachfront community’s booming hospitality industry. “This is local and immediate,” said Councilman Kevin McKeown, who proposed the motion with the support of Unite Here local 11, which represents 1,200 hotel workers in Santa Monica, including 250 at the Loews hotel. The purchase of the Loews reflects a trend among Chinese businesses and wealthy investors who have been trying to diversify their…

The San Diego Union-Tribune 07/06/17 California’s Hotel Building Boom Shows No Signs of Slowing By Lori Weisberg http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/tourism/sd-fi-hotel-development-20170706-story.html   Developers’ love affair with new hotels is not likely to flame out soon, considering the more than 18,000 rooms under construction up and down the state so far this year, with tens of thousands more in various stages of planning. In all, 130 hotels in California, accounting for 18,271 rooms, were under construction as of the end of June, a 17 percent increase over the same period in 2016, according to a mid-year development report prepared by the Orange County hotel brokerage firm, Atlas Hospitality Group. Los Angeles County easily led the way, with its 4,585 hotel rooms accounting for roughly one quarter of all hotel rooms being built in the state. In addition to the ongoing construction there has been a flurry of hotel openings this year — 26 in all for a total of 4,730 rooms, which was a 63 percent increase over the first half of 2016. In San Diego County, there were just two hotels that debuted this year — the 317-room Pendry Hotel in downtown San Diego, which is affiliated with the upscale Montage brand, and…

HotelNewsNow 07/11/17 Wine, Culinary Offerings Draw Guests to Santa Rosa By Danielle Hess http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/150807/Wine-culinary-offerings-draw-guests-to-Santa-Rosa   SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA—Napa Valley isn’t the only California destination where you can explore wine country and also be near the ocean. There’s Santa Rosa, located in Sonoma County, California, which is enjoying a tourism renaissance leading to more hotel development. The Santa Rosa market didn’t have a single hotel opening from 2014 to 2017, according to Alan Reay, president of Irvine, California-based, Atlas Hospitality Group. But now there’s a hotel under construction, and nine projects with 762 rooms in planning. Reay said there are a few factors that play into supply in the market. “One is it’s very difficult to build in Sonoma and (defined good) locations,” he said. “Second, in terms of values of existing product, it wasn’t the same as what we were seeing in … Napa Valley, where hotels were trading at $1 million and above per room. We just hadn’t seen that kind of pricing in Santa Rosa or up in Sonoma County.” While the market didn’t see any openings for three years, there were a few hotel sales, according to Reay: The Astro Motel: 33 rooms, sold for $3.6 million…

REBusinessOnline.com 06/23/17 Lone Oak Lodge in Monterey Changes Hands By Nellie Day https://rebusinessonline.com/lone-oak-lodge-in-monterey-changes-hands   MONTEREY, CALIF. — A local, private investor has acquired the 46-room Lone Oak Lodge in Monterey for an undisclosed sum. The hotel is located at 2221 N. Fremont St. The boutique property is near the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Cannery Row, Fisherman’s Wharf and Pebble Beach. Joshua Miehl and Oliver Shah of Atlas Hospitality Group represented the seller.

Silicon Valley Business Journal 06/14/17 Hotel Development Boom Hits San Jose By Olivia Schaber http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/06/14/hotel-development-boom-hits-san-jose.html   Amid a boom in convention business, an influx of new hotels is headed to downtown San Jose. The upswing follows a five-year lull, between 2009 and 2014, that brought virtually no new hospitality development to the city. Two new hotels have opened this year — the 210-room AC Hotel and the 44-room Hotel Clariana— in downtown San Jose. Three more are on the horizon: The 279-room Tribute Hote adjacent to the Four Points by Sheraton (historically the Hotel Montgomery), the Homewood Suites by Hilton north of the South Bay Freeway (CA-237) and a 173-room Kimpton Hotel in Museum Place are all set to open in the next five years. Among the biggest drivers for the development boom are the large crowds drawn from events held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and SAP Center. Both Apple and Facebook held their global developer conferences in San Jose this year, after previously hosting them in San Francisco. “You would be hard pressed to find another market in California that is dynamic as San Jose — it has a very diverse mix of demand generators,” said…

Orange County Business Journal 05/29/17 Area Hospitality Steady in Rooms, Trends, Money By Paul Hughes http://www.ocbj.com/news/2017/may/29/area-hospitality-steady-rooms-trends-money   Waterfront Beach Resort, A Hilton Hotel shuttered six of its 290 rooms last year, but it had a very good reason—the move helped make way for about 150 more in a new tower that’s scheduled to open in September. “We had to take some out with the expansion connector” that will link the two towers, a spokesperson said. The results appear to be worth it. Waterfront drops two slots on this year’s Business Journal list of the largest OC hotels ranked by room count from No. 38 to No. 40. But with the new tower, it would vault 23 slots next year to No. 18 on a ranking not known for radical shifts. When the dust clears, Waterfront will have 437 rooms, including 131 new suites at the second tower, among them presidential suites and a specialty bridal suite. Top 10 Hotels on the list this year combined for an increase of nine rooms out of a total of nearly 22,000, in general not moving the needle. • Irvine Marriott, however, cracked the top 10 with 11 rooms added as part of a…

Los Angeles Times 05/13/17 Marriott Turns to Prefabricated Rooms for Quicker Hotel Construction By Hugo Martin http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-travel-briefcase-prefab-20170513-story.html   To speed hotel construction, Marriott International is increasingly using prefabricated rooms that can be stacked like shoe boxes with a crane. The Maryland-based hotel company — the world’s largest lodging business — plans to sign deals for 50 hotel construction projects in 2017 that will use prefabricated rooms, including a hotel scheduled to begin construction this year in Hawthorne. Modular construction shortens building time and reduces the need for skilled labor at the construction site. The prefabricated rooms are built in a factory, painted and furnished before they are put on a truck and shipped to the construction site. The practice has become popular in Europe and Asia. In the U.S., industry experts say, the use of prefabricated rooms has just started to grow, spurred by the demand for new hotels and the improved quality of modular construction. “I think it is something we are going to see more of going forward,” said Alan X. Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group. Despite having prefabricated rooms, the designs of the new hotels are not limited to squares or rectangles, Marriott spokeswoman Alycia Chanin…

HotelNewsNow 04/06/17 Development, Demand Has Silicon Valley Hotels Trending Hotels in Silicon Valley are reaping the benefits of sharing the same zip codes as several widely successful international technology companies. By Bryan Wroten http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/130271/Development-demand-has-Silicon-Valley-hotels-trending   REPORT FROM THE U.S.—Known for the success of the technology companies that call the area south of San Francisco home, Silicon Valley, California, is one of the U.S. hotel markets experiencing above-average performance and attracting the attention of owners and developers across the country. Silicon Valley is actually a collection of a number of communities in and around Santa Clara County. Early in its development, the area was home to a handful of companies that “boomed and busted,” said Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group. Now there are well-established companies with incredible office campuses that draw in business travelers—as well as a growing number of leisure travelers—from around the world. Northern California didn’t take the same hit as Southern California did during the downturn, Reay said. That—along with less overbuilding, scarcity of land and barriers to entry—has contributed to a “tremendous amount of interest” and appreciation in the marketplace, he said. The Santa Clara/Silicon Valley area is probably in the top five, even top…

The Mercury News 04/05/17 New High-rise Hotel Slated for Downtown San Jose By George Avalos http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/04/new-highrise-hotel-slated-for-downtown-san-jose   Downtown San Jose is slated to land a new 24-story hotel, in a proposal that would blend a gleaming tower with a historic hotel and add nearly 300 rooms for visitors to the city’s urban core. The planned 279-room hotel will be named The Tribute Hotel San Jose, a recently created flag of the Marriott hotel chain. The tower is proposed for the historic Montgomery Hotel site downtown. “Tribute is a new brand for Marriott,” said Erik Schoennauer, a principal executive with San Jose-based The Schoennauer Co., a real estate and land-use consulting firm. “It will be a distinctive property.” The new lodging tower would be attached to the old Montgomery Hotel through a glass atrium, and the project would preserve the existing hotel at 211 S. First St. Part of the new tower would rise over a portion of the old hotel building in a cantilever structure. “The Tribute brand is associated with a historic property in destination cities of the world yet maintains the individuality and the historic nature of the existing buildings,” said Randy Zimmerman, general manager of the The…

Through the end of 2016, the California hotel market enjoyed a record six-year run-up in increasing room revenues, profitability and values. This led to a much more positive environment for new hotel construction; we are definitely seeing a jump in new hotel rooms completed and in planning. For additional information: Atlas Hospitality Group California Hotel Development Survey 2016 YE 201701

Los Angeles Business Journal 03/31/17 Extended Stay Pays for Hotels HOSPITALITY: King’s move to China yielded investors. By Daina Beth Solomon http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2017/mar/31/extended-stay-pays-hotels-hospitality   When the 2008 financial crisis crushed developer Grant King’s vision of opening a hotel in Hollywood, the co-founder of Relevant Group did more than call wealthy investors for help. He moved to Shanghai for face time with potential backers. Nearly a decade later, his $110 million Dream Hollywood Hotel is set to open this month, backed by financing from Chinese investors, including those using the EB-5 program to ease their paths to green cards. “This type of money really sets a project up to succeed. … For developers, it’s the cheapest form of capital you can get,” King said. More than helping Dream Hollywood get off the ground, Relevant was able to tap additional Chinese EB-5 funding to back three other hotels it plans to build on neighboring blocks at a cost of $185 million. It is also planning to use Chinese money to bankroll a $220 million downtown project, dubbed the Morrison Hotel. That activity caught the attention of Colony NorthStar, which recently took a minority stake in the developer. Hotel projects in particular can benefit…

Atlas Hospitality Group President Alan X. Reay on a panel at the RAR Hospitality Lodging Industry Forecast Event (March 24, 2017) https://www.facebook.com/rarhospitality/videos/840078036132321 https://www.facebook.com/rarhospitality/videos/840092306130894