Atlas in the news

The San Diego Union-Tribune 07/05/17 Hotel del Coronado Is Going to Become a Hilton By Lori Weisberg http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/tourism/sd-fi-hoteldel-hilton-20170705-story.html   The storied Hotel del Coronado will soon become a Hilton hotel, joining the huge hospitality company’s smaller Curio Collection of more unique, upscale properties around the world. But don’t expect to see a large Hilton marquee suddenly adorn the facade of the 129-year-old, red-roofed Victorian building. While Hilton’s physical presence will be understated, the company’s marketing muscle and its 64 million honors program members will significantly broaden the reach of a property that already is widely known… …The move was especially surprising to longtime broker and hotel analyst Alan Reay of Orange County-based Atlas Hospitality Group. “I’ve never seen anything like that before, where you have a restriction on who you can sell a hotel to,” said Reay, who values the hotel at $800 million to $1 billion. “It is hard to find who the real ownership is behind Anbang, and there was a concern that high-level government officials had a stake in the company.” Just last month, Anbang announced that its chairman, Wu Xiaohui, was stepping aside temporarily for “personal reasons.” The announcement came not long after it was reported…

Los Angeles Times 06/28/17 Brand-new Sunset Strip Apartments to Become Deluxe Extended-stay Hotel By Roger Vincent http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sunset-strip-sale-20170627-story.html   A just-completed apartment complex on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood has been sold to a Pennsylvania developer that plans to convert the property into a luxury extended-stay hotel. The 190 apartments at 8500 Sunset Blvd. are part of a more than $300-million development covering two blocks on the Strip that is expected to also include a separate trendy hotel called “1,” along with stores and restaurants. Korman Communities, which operates the upmarket AKA line of extended-stay hotels, bought 8500 Sunset from Los Angeles developer CIM Group. The Sunset Strip complex will be the second in the area for Korman, which already operates an 88-unit AKA on Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills that advertises room service from the legendary Spago restaurant among its amenities. Rates have not yet been announced for the West Hollywood AKA but they start at around $4,500 a week at the Beverly Hills lodging. Deluxe residential inns such as AKA are a small but growing niche in the increasingly fragmented hospitality business, said consultant Alan Reay of Atlas Hospitality Group. The current competition for AKA around Beverly Hills…

The Mercury News 06/29/17 Korean Firm Pays $64 Million for San Jose’s Iconic Sainte Claire Hotel By George Avalos http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/29/korean-firm-pays-64-million-for-san-joses-iconic-sainte-claire-hotel   SAN JOSE — A Korean resorts operator has scooped up the Westin San Jose — more commonly known as the Sainte Claire hotel — in downtown San Jose, paying $64 million for the iconic property, an indication of interest by foreign investors in the robust Silicon Valley economy. Aju Hotel Silicon Valley, an entity controlled by Aju Hotels and Resorts, bought the historic Westin San Jose on June 15, according to Santa Clara County property records. Aju Hotels is a developer and operator of hotels in South Korea and the Bay Area, according to the Aju website. “This investment shows that Silicon Valley is a hot market for hotels right now,” said Alan Reay, president of Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group, which tracks the California lodging market. The purchase comes on the heels of other recent hotel acquisitions and construction of new lodging properties in San Jose. “There is no question that San Jose is one of the best hotel markets in California in terms of being desired by buyers,” Reay said. “San Jose is in the top three, along…

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…