Atlas in the news

Los Angeles Business Journal 05/07/19 Tourist-Driven Revenue in LA County Increased 4.9% to $36.6B By Rachel Uranga https://labusinessjournal.com/news/2019/may/07/tourist-driven-revenue-la-county-increased-49-366b/ An economic impact report released by the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board on May 7 found that the 50 million tourists who visited the L.A. region spent $23.9 billion, helping to generated $36.6 billion in total economic impact. Tourist spending was up 5% over last year. Nearly a third of those dollars were spent on hotel and accommodations. The county’s hotels sold a record 30.2 million hotel rooms with an average daily rate of $180.17. The stays generated $308 million in collected tax funds for Los Angeles, which was up 8.7% over last year. Tourists had more rooms to choose from last year with 11 new hotels coming online, according to Atlas Hospitality Group. An additional 45 hotel projects were under construction and the group estimates an additionally 3,000 rooms will be available by next year. Many of the new hotel are located near the Convention Center, where developers and city officials are looking to draw in more visitors. Ernest Wooden Jr., head of the board, said that the coming years will place even more emphasis on delivering community benefits thought…

CoStar 05/06/19 At Age 131, Hotel del Coronado Gets 21st Century Upgrades Iconic San Diego Property in Midst of $200 Million Renovation By Lou Hirsh https://product.costar.com/home/news/shared/580709569 Upcoming renovations at Hotel del Coronado, which opened in 1888, include 142 additional guest rooms, a new conference center, an overhauled main entrance and new on-site dining and social spaces. Private equity giant Blackstone Group is embarking on a $200 million renovation of its historic Hotel del Coronado, marking the largest overhaul in the 131-year history of one of San Diego’s — and California’s — most iconic hospitality properties. Operators are adding 142 guest rooms to the 757-room property, building a conference center and moving most of its parking underground to make way for more outdoor space to accommodate beachside dining and strolling. It’s all part of efforts to preserve the Victorian-style hotel’s rich history and architecture, while keeping it competitive with a slew of niche luxury brands being rolled out by the major chain hotel operators. “We wanted to make sure to keep this property relevant to what consumers want in a vacation spot, but still keep those things that make it so unique,” said hotel spokeswoman Stacey Ellis. Hotel Del Coronado’s latest…

Hotel Management 03/29/19 CLIC Attracts Record Number of Attendees By Chuck Dobrosielski https://www.hotelmanagement.net/asset-management/record-number-attendees-attend-clic Held March 7, the third annual California Lodging Investment Conference brought in a record number of attendees. More than 300 people registered for the California-focused hospitality event, hosted this year by The Westin South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. The conference centered exclusively on the California hotel market, offering six panels and a day’s worth of networking. Craig Sullivan, CLIC’s founder and president, and Arnie Garfinkel, president of the All Star Group, produced the event. Bruce Ford, senior vice president and director of global business development for Lodging Econometrics, delivered the opening keynote and Alan X. Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group, gave the luncheon keynote. Attendees also heard a California legislative presentation from the California Lodging Industry Association’s EVP/COO Bobbie Singh-Allen, as well as an Asian American Hotel Owners Association update from the organization’s chairman, Hitesh Patel.

East Bay Times 04/01/19 New Downtown San Jose AC Hotel Near Google Transit Village Is Bought AC Hotel Marriott in downtown San Jose is bought by veteran East Coast real estate firm By George Avalos New downtown San Jose hotel near Google transit village is bought SAN JOSE — Downtown San Jose’s newest hotel has been bought by a big real estate company from the New York City area, an indicator of ongoing confidence in the urban core of the Bay Area’s largest city. An affiliate of AVR Realty, based in Yonkers, a city about 11 miles from Manhattan, has bought the AC Hotel San Jose, which is a Marriott brand with a European flair that caters to millennial customers. “This is a very strong hotel market in downtown San Jose that AVR Realty is buying into,” said Alan Reay, president of Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group, which tracks the lodging market in California. “Downtown San Jose is a market where demand exceeds supply.” AVR San Jose Downtown Hotel, the AVR affiliate, paid $95.4 million last week to buy the hotel, according to Santa Clara County public records. The county documents show the buying entity is controlled by AVR Realty, a…

Napa Valley Register 02/23/19 Napa Hotel Room Revenue Tops $426.8 Million in 2018 – a Record By Jennifer Huffman https://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/napa-hotel-room-revenue-tops-million-in—a/article_6a2b2b5e-284d-5537-ac64-dd5f0fa22cb9.html If you build it they will come… and spend money. Overnight visitors to Napa County spent more than $426 million in Napa hotel rooms in 2018, a 7.6 percent increase from the year before and a record high. The average daily room rate of a Napa County hotel rose 4.9 percent — reaching $324.80 per night. Occupancy dipped just .5 percent, settling in at 71.1 percent, according to data and analytics specialist company STR. “It’s great,” said Clay Gregory, CEO of Visit Napa Valley. “We’re very happy about,” the increases. Gregory attributes those changes to several things, including the addition of more hotel rooms, an increase in international visitors, and VNV’s ability to market the valley as open for business, especially after the 2017 fires. According to Atlas Hospitality Group and VNV, an estimated 167 new rooms opened in Napa County in 2018. The majority — 145 rooms — opened at the Vista Collina Resort in South Napa. A smaller number of new rooms also opened in the Francis House in Calistoga, The Ink House in St. Helena, The Bungalows…

The San Diego Union Tribune 02/15/19 Hotel del Coronado Starts $200M Upgrade, Its Biggest Ever. Does It Need It? By Lori Weisberg https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/tourism/sd-fi-hoteldelcoronado-makeover-expansion-20190215-story.html For decades, the stately Hotel del Coronado, with its imposing red-roofed turret, chandelier-bedecked Victorian lobby and its storied ties to Hollywood nobility, has been instantly recognizable well beyond San Diego County… “This is in Coronado, where it’s extremely difficult to get approvals for anything so the value of being able to add more rooms to that is incredible,” said Alan Reay, president of the Orange County-based Atlas Hospitality Group. “I don’t know of any other hotel on the California coast with that amount of rooms and meeting facilities so it’s very difficult to go wrong with adding the rooms they’re adding. “It’s like it’s own little demand generator, which makes it very, very unique.”

The San Diego Union-Tribune 02/05/19 Hotel Sales Might Be Down, but This Carlsbad Sale Just Broke a Record for Southern California By Lori Weisberg https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/tourism/sd-fi-sandiego-largest-hotel-sale-20190205-story.html California hotel sales declined sharply last year, but San Diego still earned bragging rights as having the most expensive sale in Southern California. The $170 million sale last November of the Park Hyatt Aviara catapulted the county into first place for the highest individual hotel transaction, but the $575 million sale of the 681-room Park Central in San Francisco was No.1 in California, according to a year-end report prepared by the Atlas Hospitality Group. The sale of the upscale Carlsbad resort, which also included a golf course, had been taken over by its lender following a years-long struggle by previous owners to repay debt that was coming due. Statewide, the total number of individual transactions last year — 280 — represented a more than 24 percent drop compared to 2017. It was also the third lowest volume of sales over the last decade, Atlas reported. Similarly, the total dollar volume — $5.6 billion — also fell, posting a decline of nearly 10 percent. Still, in a sign that hotel values may be rising for at…

Bisnow 02/03/19 The Hotel Industry Has Mixed Feelings About Opportunity Zones By Joseph Pimentel https://www.bisnow.com/los-angeles/news/hotel/alis-conference-the-hotel-industry-has-mixed-feelings-about-opportunity-zones-97297 When it comes to the new opportunity zone program that gives investors a hefty tax incentive in return for investing in designated opportunity zones that are in mostly low-income areas, many hotel executives are still leery of the federal program and how to take advantage of it. You can’t place a hotel in an area with little infrastructure, no job growth or main commercial drivers, Lifeafar Investments Chief Financial Officer Cole Shepard said. LifeAfar recently purchased Plaza Colón Hotel & Suites in San Juan Puerto Rico. This part of Puerto Rico is a designated opportunity zone. “These [designated] opportunity zones are usually in the third-tier areas,” Shepard said. “If someone wanted to build a hotel there, they would have already done it.” One year since it was passed under President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, the opportunity zone program has generated a lot of excitement, optimism and cautiousness. But as the commercial real estate industry waits on the federal government to release the second round of guidelines, hotel executives and hospitality experts aren’t quite sure what to make of the program…

The Registry 01/31/19 KT Urban’s Plan for Downtown San Jose Hotel Grows to 330 Rooms By Meghan Hall https://news.theregistrysf.com/kt-urbans-plan-for-downtown-san-jose-hotel-grows-to-330-rooms Cupertino, Calif.-based KT Urban’s original plans for its proposed luxury hotel at 8 North Almaden Blvd. have gotten an update, according to City of San Jose planning documents. The hotel, called Almaden Corner, was originally proposed in the spring of 2018 and was slated to include 220 rooms. While the building’s height will remain the same at 225 feet, planning documents indicate that the room count has now been upped to 330, and the project’s 77 parking spots would be completely eliminated. The 0.39-acre project site is currently a private parking lot, which would be removed prior to construction. Guest rooms would be located on floors three through 18, while a restaurant and bar are proposed for both the ground and 19th floors. The second floor would be reserved for guest amenities and hotel administration. Parking for patrons would be provided off-site via a valet located on Almaden Boulevard. According to Atlas Hospitality Group’s 2018 Year-End California Hotel Sales Survey, while the number of hotel transactions in Santa Clara County decreased sharply from 12 to four between 2017 and 2018, other…

Orange County Business Journal 01/28/19 OC Hotel Property Sales Down 30% By Katie Murar https://www.ocbj.com/news/2019/jan/28/oc-hotel-property-sales-down-30/   The number of hotels sold last year in Orange County declined 30% to 16 with a cumulative value of $343 million, according to a report by Atlas Hospitality Group in Irvine. The average sale price dipped 3% to $21.4 million and the average price-per-room was flat at $196,000, the report said. The priciest, and biggest, of the 16 sold was the 408-room Hyatt Regency Newport Beach, which traded hands for $95 million. The 41-room Laguna Riviera Beach Resort sold for the highest price per room, $512,195. Statewide hotel sales fell 24% to 280 compared with 369, the third lowest volume of sales over the past decade. Dollar volume declined 10% to $5.6 billion, while the average sales price rose 17% to $20 million. The median sales price per room of $121,439 is a new record for California hotels and a 14% jump over 2017 and up 77% over the last five years alone, Atlas said.

The Real Deal 01/28/19 Amid Decline, LA Still Leads CA in Hotel Development: Report By Natalie Hoberman https://therealdeal.com/la/2019/01/28/amid-decline-la-still-leads-ca-in-hotel-development-report   Los Angeles County is leading the state in hotel development by a landslide. A new report from Atlas Hospitality Group revealed there are 6,727 rooms under construction in the county, double the amount in Santa Clara County up north, which ranked second. More hotel rooms also opened in L.A. County last year than anywhere else in California. In 2018, 11 new hotels with a combined 1,526 rooms opened. San Diego followed with 1,224 rooms. Overall, there are 203 hotels with 29,114 rooms under construction in the state. There were 52 new hotels with 6,592 rooms that opened in 2018. Yet, despite ranking first in many categories, L.A. is showing signs of a slowdown in its hotel construction boom. The number of hotel rooms dropped 65 percent from 4,309 rooms in 2017 to 1,526 rooms in 2018, according to the report. Hotel transactions also dropped 4 percent year over year to 48 trades, while total-dollar volume decreased 14 percent to $1.4 billion in 2018. Still, hotels are increasingly expensive in the area — the county’s median price per room increased nearly 18…

The Registry 01/25/19 Hotel Planned for Downtown Redwood City Heads to Environmental Review By Meghan Hall https://news.theregistrysf.com/112-key-hotel-planned-for-downtown-redwood-city-heads-to-environmental-review Redwood City’s 17-room Garden Motel, located at 1690 Broadway near Peninsula city’s downtown core is slated to be replaced by a new, 112-key Holiday Inn Express & Suites. After owning the property for nearly forty years, the Patel Family has decided to redevelop the site to better accommodate guests and bring their business into the modern era. “The intention was always there since day one, but the stars aligned,” explained Viren Patel, the project applicant and contact for his family’s business, San Mateo, Calif.-based RWC Hospitality, LP. “The economy for hotels is at its highest, and the land value has skyrocketed.” California — and the San Francisco Bay Area — hotel market has been heating up in recent years. 2017 saw a record-high number of deliveries and openings, with 66 hotels opening throughout the state in 2017, and another 52 in 2018, according to Atlas Hospitality Group’s California Hotel Development 2018 Year-End Survey. Across San Mateo County, 28 hotels and 3,540 rooms were in planning at the end of the year, an 11 percent increase over the year before. Four hotels, totaling 718…