Atlas in the news

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

WEHOville 03/29/17 Mayor Meister Calls for a Moratorium on New WeHo Hotel Construction By Staff http://www.wehoville.com/2017/03/29/mayor-meister-calls-moratorium-new-weho-hotel-construction/ Mayor Lauren Meister will ask the West Hollywood City Council on Monday to declare a moratorium on the development of new hotels in WeHo until the city can conduct a new study on their impact on the existing hotel market. In her proposal, Meister notes that last September the Council was given an analysis of the WeHo hotel market that projected a major decline in hotel occupancy and in the rate per hotel room if the city grants permits to hotel projects currently under review on top of those that already under construction or that already have been approved for construction. Yet, she said in an interview with WEHOville, the Council simply “received and filed” the analysis without acting on it. The analysis, by PFK Consulting and CBRE Hotels, noted that WeHo hotel projects under review, under consideration and already approved for construction would add 1,229 rooms to the city’s current 2,060 hotel rooms, an increase of 60%. The study projected that by 2020 the hotel room occupancy rate would fall to 68% from the rate of 83% in 2015. It also said that…

The Real Deal 03/29/17 West Hollywood Mayor Seeks Moratorium on Hotel Construction By Hannah Miet https://therealdeal.com/la/2017/03/29/west-hollywood-mayor-seeks-a-moratorium-on-hotel-construction   West Hollywood Mayor Lauren Meister is wary of the hotel boom sweeping the city. So wary, in fact, that she will bring a proposal to City Council on Monday calling for a moratorium on new hotel development until West Hollywood conducts a study on the economic impacts of a room surplus. In her proposal, Meister cites a study conducted by PFK Consulting and CBRE Hotels last year, which predicted the volume of projects in the pipeline could reduce occupancy and hotel room rates, Wehoville reported. If all 1,229 rooms in hotel projects in the pipeline are completed — an almost 60 percent increase in inventory — WeHo’s hotel room occupancy rate could fall from its current average of 80 percent to 68 percent in 2020, the report predicted. In response to the report, Atlas Hospitality Group said the surplus of rooms would “cannibalize the market” and potentially decrease the hotel room tax taken in by the city by as much as $1 million in 2020 and 2021. Meister argues these warnings were not given enough attention. The council “received and filed” the information…