Atlas in the news

Los Angeles Times 10/17/15 Dark Harbor Halloween Event May Finally Scare Up Success for Queen Mary By Hugo Martin http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-queen-mary-halloween-20151017-story.html   In the 48 years that the Queen Mary has been docked in Long Beach Harbor, a series of operators tried to turn the aging ocean liner into a thriving hotel and tourist attraction, with a mixed record of success. But the tide finally may be turning for the 1,000-foot-long ship, thanks partly to the surging attendance of several special events hosted by the Queen Mary, including its annual Halloween festivity, dubbed Dark Harbor. The event, which has grown along with Halloween’s increasing popularity with adults, could draw more than 120,000 people this season, helping keep the ship afloat after perennial losses. “It’s a profitable enterprise now, which it hasn’t been for a number of years,” said Michael Conway, the city’s business and property development director. Revenue from the events, including a September music festival, has jumped 400% over the last five years. And as the events have exposed more people to the Queen Mary, revenue from rentals of the ship’s 314 rooms has increased by 85% in the same period, according to city financial records. Those results are promising…

Laguna Beach Independent 09/26/15 Hotels Check-in to Water Saving By Tim J. Randall https://www.lagunabeachindy.com/hotels-check-in-to-water-saving/   Even before drought struck California, hotel guests routinely entered rooms outfitted with eco-conscious messages, encouraging travelers to reuse towels and forego a daily change of bedding. That turned out to be the easy first step. Now, in addition to asking guests to curb their water usage, hotel operators are coming up with even more ingenious solutions to tighten up their water use, according to Andy Brunhart, general manager of the South Coast Water District, which serves South Laguna and nearby cities. He’s pleased because tangible results by hotels helped the district surpass its 24 percent water reduction target by achieving a 33 percent drop in use in July as compared to July of 2013 figures. And hotel operators are equally pleased by the cost savings. At Montage Laguna Beach, a new procedure at the resort’s three restaurants saves 3,000 gallons of water a week, said managing director Rick Reiss. “We have taken the drought incredibly serious. We began to research possibilities to go above and beyond the state of California mandates,” he said. An article written by the executive chef at the Post Ranch Inn…

Orange County Business Journal 09/21/15 Marketing Arm Grows with Hotel Trade in Irvine HOSPITALITY: Boost in store for improvement-district coffers By Paul Hughes http://www.ocbj.com/news/2015/sep/21/marketing-arm-grows-hotel-trade-irvine/ Irvine’s growing role as a hospitality hub will bring its own reward to hotels in the city. The benefit is expected to come in the form of an additional $750,000 for cooperative marketing efforts on behalf of the growing roster of hotels throughout the city over the next two to three years. The nearly 36% increase from the $2.1 million expected to flow to a city-sanctioned hotel improvement district in the current fiscal year would come from six new establishments—one that opened in August and five more in various stages of planning. The growth streak is set to raise the number of hotels in Irvine to 21 over the next 18 months. That places Irvine in the middle of the pack of OC cities for hotel counts and takes the total room count in the city up to about 4,700—both gains of more than 30% (see sidebar, below). A bed tax of 8% is expected to bring the city itself $11.2 million this fiscal year, a city spokesperson said. The hotel improvement district in Irvine (see…

Orange County Business Journal 09/22/15 Pacifica in $44M Hotel Sale By Paul Hughes http://www.ocbj.com/news/2015/sep/22/pacifica-44m-hotel-sale/ Irvine-based Pacifica Hotels sold the Hilton Garden Inn Marina del Rey to Chatham Lodging Trust in West Palm Beach, Fla., for $44.5 million. The price works out to about $332,000 per room for the 134-room property. About half the purchase price—$22.6 million—came through the assumption of debt on the property, Chatham said. Pacifica bought the hotel, then called the Marina International Hotel, for about $20.2 million in May 2006. It renovated the property and relaunched it under the Hilton name in June 2013. It owns four other hotels in the Marina del Rey area—Marina del Rey Hotel, Jamaica Bay Inn, Inn at Marina del Rey and Inn at Venice Beach—each of which it has renovated. “We will continue to strategically develop and reposition assets in premier destinations,” said Pacifica Hotels Chief Executive Matt Marquis in a statement. “This sale is another example of the premium prices being achieved for well located, top branded hotels in the marketplace today,” said Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group in Irvine. Pacifica is owned by Invest West Financial Corp. in Santa Barbara. It owns and operates some 30 properties…

Silicon Valley Business Journal 09/09/15 Meet the Downtown San Jose Hotel Being Built Without Many People Knowing About It By Nathan Donato-Weinstein http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/09/09/meet-the-downtown-san-jose-hotel-being-built.html If you live or work in downtown San Jose, you may have walked by a new hotel under construction and not even realized it. For the last several months — and somewhat under the radar — construction crews have been swarming 100 E. Santa Clara St. to convert the 27,000-square-foot office building to a 44-room hotel. Folks, meet “Hotel Clariana” (the name is for the street), which an owner’s representative described to me last week as an “upscale” boutique hotel. “Everything’s going to be updated,” said Tina Phan, of ownership group RSTP Investments LLC. “It’s not like other hotels. We want to have a really nice place for business people and families.” RSTP acquired the five-story building back in 2009 through a deed in lieu of foreclosure after the previous owner defaulted on a $4.8 million loan. In 2009, RSTP leased the building to the now-defunct San Jose Redevelopment Agency, which established the Entrepreneur Center there, leasing it to nonprofits and business development groups. That lease expired a few years ago, and the owners had to decide…

Silicon Valley Business Journal 09/14/15 Larry Ellison Buys Swanky Palo Alto Hotel for Steep Price By Nathan Donato-Weinstein http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/09/14/exclusive-larry-ellison-buys-swanky-palo-alto.html First Lanai. Then Malibu. Now: Palo Alto? Billionaire Larry Ellison’s investment arm has acquired Palo Alto’s Epiphany Hotel — an 86-room trophy property in the heart of downtown Palo Alto — according to public records and local hospitality sources. The Oracle Corp. co-founder, through a limited liability company, just dropped $71.6 million — or about $832,500 per room — for the property that opened last year, according to public records I examined today at the Santa Clara County Clerk-Recorder’s Office. That’s a whopping number and could be a record in the region outside of San Francisco. It’s the latest example of the tech titan’s well-documented penchant for property. In 2012, Ellison paid an estimated $500 million for most of the Hawaiian island of Lanai. He has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying up multiple properties — including a hotel — in Malibu, the L.A. Times reported in 2013. And of course, there are his luxurious homes in San Francisco, Woodside and Lake Tahoe. “There’s no question he loves trophy properties in great locations,” said Alan X. Reay of Atlas Hospitality…

San Jose Mercury News 09/15/15 Larry Ellison Group Buys Hotel in Downtown Palo Alto By George Avalos http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28811148/larry-ellison-group-buys-hotel-downtown-palo-alto A group controlled by software tycoon Larry Ellison has paid the equivalent of nearly $1 million per room for a boutique hotel in downtown Palo Alto. PA Hotel Holdings paid $71.6 million for the 86-room Epiphany Hotel, according to Santa Clara County public records. That purchase was for the hotel structure and a ground lease, a transaction that experts say underscores the white-hot job market in Silicon Valley. The deal was first reported in the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Combing the price paid for the building with the value of the ground lease for the property, the hotel was bought by Ellison’s group for a record-setting $1 million per room, estimated Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group, which tracks the hotel market. “There is seemingly no end in sight in terms of how high the values are being pushed for quality real estate in Silicon Valley, especially in locations that are hard to duplicate,” Reay said. But the purchase by Ellison’s group of the hotel also points to the strength of the underlying economy in Santa Clara County and the Bay…

The Orange County Register 09/08/15 Ritz-Carlton, Montage Will Get New Owner as Blackstone Group Agrees to Pay $6 Billion for Strategic Hotels & Resorts By Jonathan Lanser http://www.ocregister.com/articles/hotels-681579-year-hotel.html The hotel buying binge continues. Two of Orange County’s landmark luxury hotels, the 393-room Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel and the 250-room Montage Laguna Beach, will get a new owner: a real estate giant that owns, among other things, the Motel 6 budget chain. Blackstone Group is buying Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc., which owns the Montage and Ritz-Carlton, in a cash and debt deal worth roughly $6 billion. Chicago-based Strategic owns 18 luxury hotels, including San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado and the Essex House overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park. The deal is expected to close early next year. Hotels in the region have been changing hands at a blazing pace. A record $4.4 billion was spent to buy 174 California hotels in the first half of the year, according to Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group, a hotel consulting firm. This year’s sales spree included Strategic’s January acquisition of the Montage for $360 million, or $1.4 million per room – the highest valuation ever for a California hotel. Buyers have focused on the high end. Total…

San Diego Source 09/08/15 Hotel del Coronado Part of Blackstone Acquisition By Thor Kamban Biberman http://www.sddt.com/News/article.cfm?SourceCode=20150908czb&_t=Hotel+del+Coronado+part+of+Blackstone+acquisition The Blackstone Group which until last year had owned a majority stake in the Hotel del Coronado, will acquire the resort along with the rest of Strategic Hotels & Resorts’ assets for about $6 billion. A New York-based Blackstone (NYSE: BX) entity known as Blackstone Real Estate Partners VIII LP is by early next year set to acquire all outstanding shares of common stock of Chicago-based Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc. (NYSE: BEE) for $14.25 per share in cash, and all of the outstanding membership units of the company’s subsidiary, Strategic Hotels Funding LLC, not held by the company, for $14.25 per unit in cash. Last year that Strategic acquired the remaining 63.6 percent stake in the 757-room Hotel del Coronado for $210 million in cash, plus the assumption of $475 million in mortgage debt. Blackstone bailed out the hotel by buying that 63.6 percent stake just before Strategic was expected to default on a $600 million loan in 2011. The exact terms as they pertain to the Hotel del alone weren’t clear; Atlas Hospitality Group pegged the hotel’s value at about $800 million…

International Meetings Review 09/02/15 How Meetings and Events Helped Revive San Diego’s Economy http://www.internationalmeetingsreview.com/california/how-meetings-and-events-helped-revive-san-diegos-economy-101990 The downtown San Diego hotel market lives on group business and leisure demand. The city’s bayfront convention center annually hosts nearly 50 shows and conferences, drawing more than 500,000 attendees. And the temperate southern California climate is a magnet for sun-seeking tourists. Like the rest of the United States, the San Diego market suffered during the last recession. Recovery was slower than for other major hotel markets, said Aaron Solaimani, an associate in the San Francisco office of HVS. “The reason is because San Diego doesn’t have an incredibly strong base of commercial roomnights,” he said. “It does draw business from the government segment, which is a type of commercial demand but generally lower-rated because of government per-diems.” Following the slow climb back from the downturn, the market has performed well in recent years with strong increases in performance metrics forecast through 2020. According to a Tourism Economics study, citywide occupancy was 74.6 percent in 2014 and is forecast to rise to 77.7 percent this year and above 78 percent in 2016 and 2017. Average daily rates will increase 6.1 percent this year and are expected…

The Press-Enterprise 09/08/15 Hotel Sales Volume in SoCal Shows 61 Percent Mid-Year Gain Hotel sales percolate in the Inland area; a Mexican bank wants to gain an Inland foothold By Debra Gruszecki http://www.pe.com/articles/hotel-779336-sales-million.html Hospitality investment is staging a comeback, if hotel sales over the first six months of 2015 are an indication. Atlas Hospitality Group’s mid-year Hotel Sales Survey reports a record $4.4 billion in sales across the California, and $2.3 billion in sales came from 67 hotel transactions in Southern California. Hotel sales volume eclipsed all previous mid-year totals since the Irvine-based hospitality industry reporting service started tracking sales in 1994, Atlas president Alan Reay said in the report. Across Southern California, the $2.3 billion in total hotel sales was up 61 percent from $1.4 billion in transactions over the January-to-June period of 2014. Twenty hotels sold in the Inland region for $130.4 million over the first six months, the survey said. Over the same period of 2014, 23 hotel sales took place in Riverside and San Bernardino counties and transactions totaled $89.1 million. The largest and most expensive Riverside County hotel sale was Renaissance Palm Springs, a 410-room property selling for $65 million. The largest hotel to be…

Santa Cruz Sentinel 09/06/15 Changes Ahead at Capitola Hotel By Jondi Gumz http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/business/20150906/changes-ahead-at-capitola-hotel A new owner is bringing Southern hospitality to the Capitola Hotel and contemplating how to update the 10-room lodging tucked into the beachfront village at 210 Esplanade. “I get asked all the time, ‘Do you know where it is?’” said Corrie Sid, 45, a graduate of Auburn University in Alabama and a mother of two, who took over at the end of July. The hotel was built in 1946. Sid’s goal is to “make the hotel what we think it should be.” She’s already begun talks with designers about the pineapple logo and with architects at Fuse down the street about potential room reconfigurations, trying to align everything for the hotel’s success. “She has so much energy,” said Wendy Melrose of Lina’s Floral, impressed she is “a woman in business trying to do it all,” wearing a matching ensemble and full makeup and sharing her ideas to upscale the property. “She introduced herself to all her neighbors,” Melrose said. “A lot of times, people don’t do that any more.” Sid put her psychology major to work in the corporate world in the San Francisco Bay Area, training…