Atlas in the news
Hotel Books New Owner
Los Angeles Business Journal 03/10/17 Hotel Books New Owner HOSPITALITY: Host pays $219 million for W property that resurrected Hollywood. By Caroline Anderson http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2017/mar/10/hotel-books-new-owner A Bethesda, Md., real estate investment trust has acquired the W Hollywood hotel, which has been credited with kick-starting development in the Hollywood and Vine neighborhood. Host Hotels & Resorts paid $219 million for the 305-room hotel, more than 10,000 square feet of retail space, and seven billboards at the property, the company said last week in a press release. The purchase didn’t include the W Residences, a collection of condos. Dallas-based hotel developer Gatehouse Capital and Norwalk, Conn., hotel owner-operator HEI Hotels & Resorts spent $600 million developing the franchise of the W Hotels & Resorts brand owned by Marriott International Inc. The W opened in early 2010 on Hollywood Boulevard, where it is connected to the Red Line subway station, and the surrounding area has since flourished with new retail, restaurants, and hotels. The price of more than $718,000 a room is in line with other recent transactions in the area, said Alan Reay, president of Irvine hotel brokerage Atlas Hospitality Group. Leron Gubler, chief executive of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said…
What California’s Transactions Dip Means for Owners
HotelNewsNow 03/06/17 What California’s Transactions Dip Means for Owners The 2016 California Hotel Sales Survey shows hoteliers couldn’t keep up the record pace in transactions last year, but owners are still looking for deals in the Golden State. By Bryan Wroten http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/122235/What-Californias-transactions-dip-means-for-owners REPORT FROM THE U.S.—With high barriers to entry in the California market and, in some cases, seemingly endless demand, hoteliers have scoured the West Coast, looking for any possible way in. However, after riding years of record transaction numbers, the cycle has caught up with California. The latest California hotel sales survey by Atlas Hospitality Group shows sales volume decreased by 30% from 2015 to 2016 to $6.6 billion, and Atlas President Alan Reay said he expects that trend to continue through 2017. “In large part I think it’s because we had such a phenomenal year in 2015, there really was nowhere to go but down,” he said. “It’s unusual to have $9 billion a year for California sales.” Atlas Hospitality Group has been tracking these figures for 20 years, and Reay said in relation to any other year but 2015, 2016 was still a good year for hotel sales. “It’s only when you compare it to…
Hoteliers May Be Running Out of Room for Deals
Los Angeles Business Journal 03/03/17 Hoteliers May Be Running Out of Room for Deals By Caroline Anderson http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2017/mar/03/hoteliers-may-be-running-out-room-deals With occupancy and hotel rates both hitting record highs in recent years in Los Angeles County, hotelier Renu Sikand had no reservations about checking in to the market. She and her husband, Happy, paid $16.5 million for a 55-room Best Western Royal Palace Inn & Suites on Sepulveda Boulevard in West Los Angeles through their firm Happy Hotels in January of last year. “We felt we were paying a little more than we should have maybe, but we’ve been hungry to have something in the L.A. area, so we don’t look back,” Renu Sikand said. Despite the hotel industry boom, investments such as the Sikands’ have started to cool off, according to a report released last month by hotel brokerage Atlas Hospitality Group. After hitting a peak of 66 transactions in 2014, sales of hotel properties remained flat at 58 for each of the past two years, the report says. That amount is expected to decline slightly this year. “There’s no question the market has definitely slowed down,” said Alan Reay, president of Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality, which brokered the deal for…
Drop in Hotel Volume Seen as a Return to Normal
GlobeSt.com 03/01/17 Drop in Hotel Volume Seen as a Return to Normal By Carrie Rossenfeld http://www.globest.com/sites/carrierossenfeld/2017/03/01/drop-in-hotel-volume-seen-as-a-return-to-normal IRVINE, CA—The decline in dollar volume for hotel sales in 2016 is not really that significant since we were coming off a record-breaking year in 2015 and the decrease was anticipated, Atlas Hospitality’s president Alan Reay tells GlobeSt.com. According to the company’s 2016 YE California Hotel Sales Survey, the decline in total dollar volume that we saw in its mid-year report carried through to the end of the year. California hotel sales volume was down over 54% for the year, while individual sales transactions were down 18%. These figures compare to a decline in hotel sales volume of 30% and individual transactions down 43% for the US overall (as reported by Real Capital Analytics). We spoke with Reay about the takeaways from the report and what they indicate about the hotel sector this year. GlobeSt.com: How significant is the decline in dollar volume for hotel sales to the overall health of the hospitality sector? Reay: It is not really that significant since we were coming off of a record breaking year in 2015, so we anticipated that dollar volume and number of transactions…
Are the President’s Policies Hurting the Trump Hotels?
Los Angeles Times 02/25/17 Are the President’s Policies Hurting the Trump Hotels? By Hugo Martin http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-travel-briefcase-trump-hotel-20170225-story,amp.html Since President Trump took office, controversy over some of his policies has triggered noisy protests and rallies in front of hotels emblazoned with the Trump name. It is uncertain if the rallies and protests have hurt business at Trump hotels but online travel sites that book Trump hotels have come under increasing fire from critics of the president. Trump Hotels includes eight properties in the U.S. and five international locations that are either managed or branded by the New York company, founded by Donald J. Trump. Online travel booking sites such as Hotwire and Priceline are under attack on social media from Trump critics who say they fear those sites may book them into a Trump hotel without their knowledge. Travelers who use Hotwire.com and “Express Deals” on Priceline.com can request a room in a specific city but aren’t told the hotel name until after they pay. Hotels, car rental companies and airlines can use such “blind” booking sites to unload vacant rooms, empty airline seats and unused cars without lowering their prices on traditional sales channels. But since Trump was elected, a growing…
West Hollywood Sunset Tower Hotel Targets $100M Sale
Los Angeles Business Journal 02/24/17 West Hollywood Sunset Tower Hotel Targets $100M Sale By Daina Beth Solomon http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2017/feb/24/west-hollywood-sunset-tower-hotel-targets-100m-sal West Hollywood’s Sunset Tower Hotel went on the market for roughly $100 million last week, according to a source familiar with the site. At a price translating to $1.2 million a room, the transaction would become one of the few hotel deals in Southern California to vault over $1 million per unit. The seller is Thai investor Thosapong Jaruthavee, also known as Mr. T, who purchased an 80 percent stake in the property for about $60 million in 2015 through holding company ER Hollywood. At the time, the hotel’s value was pegged at $75 million. L.A.-based hotelier Jeff Klein owns the remaining stake in the Art Deco tower that is home to 81 high-end rooms and the Tower Bar and Restaurant. Jones Lang LaSalle brokers Jeff Davis and Tony Muscio are marketing the site, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations. Jaruthavee would be able to sell his stake alone, or obligate Klein to sell his stake as well, the source said. Klein, reached by phone Friday, declined to comment. Sunset Tower’s average occupancy is about 85 percent, according…
Homewood Suites Opens Near JWA
The Orange County Register 02/14/17 Homewood Suites Opens Near JWA By Hannah Madans http://www.ocregister.com/articles/irvine-743995-hotel-suites.html Construction has been completed on the now up and running Homewood Suites by Hilton Irvine/John Wayne Airport. The project was Irvine-based R.D. Olson Construction’s first partnership with hotel management and development company DKN Hotels, also based in Irvine. “When presented with the opportunity to partner on a project in our own backyard, we gladly accepted the job,” said Bill Wilhelm, president of R.D. Olson Construction in a statement. “Our deep-rooted experience in hospitality made this a perfect new endeavor with DKN Hotels, and we enjoyed working with them to deliver a top-notch product for our community.” The Homewood Suites is a 161-room, four-story hotel. It has a business center, 1,500 square feet of meeting space and a food market. R.D. Olson Construction also recently finished work on the Country Inns & Suites by Carlson, a 174-room hotel in the Anaheim Resort District and a 200-room Residence Inn by Marriott hotel in Wailea, Maui, Hawaii. The company also is working on Lido House Hotel in Newport Beach, the Irvine Spectrum Marriott and the Residence Inn by Marriott Santa Barbara/Goleta. Eleven hotels are scheduled to open this year,…
Hotel Deals Down in 2016
Orange County Business Journal 02/13/17 Hotel Deals Down in 2016 By Paul Hughes http://www.ocbj.com/news/2017/feb/13/hotel-deals-down-2016 22 hotels sold in Orange County for $807 million last year, down 19% and 54%, respectively, from 2015, when 27 hotels sold for $1.8 billion, according to Atlas Hospitality Group in Irvine. The year-end report from hotel consultant and broker Atlas, though, shows a slight boosts in average and median prices per room for hotels that sold—partly a reflection of the prominent properties to change hands. The 396-room Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niguel, in Dana Point, for instance, was the largest and most expensive OC hotel that got a new owner in 2016. Blackstone Group LLC in New York sold the Ritz in September for about $366 million to Anbang Insurance Group Co. in China, in a $6.5 billion portfolio deal which also included Montage Laguna Beach; Montage sold for about $243 million in that deal. The 306-room Hilton Irvine/Orange County Airport was another big 2016 deal in OC 2016. It sold to a China-based buyer in September for about $80 million. The declines mirror a tightening market for hotel transactions in California and the hotel industry overall. Atlas had projected at the beginning of 2016…
Atlas Report: Local Hotel Property Deal Volume Down 67.8 Percent in 2016
San Diego Business Journal 02/13/17 Atlas Report: Local Hotel Property Deal Volume Down 67.8 Percent in 2016 By Lou Hirsh http://www.sdbj.com/news/2017/feb/13/atlas-report-local-hotel-property-deal-volume-down San Diego County saw hotel property sales volume in 2016 decline 67.8 percent from the prior year, to $473.1 million, as the number of completed deals dropped from 30 to 21, according to the latest annual California data from Atlas Hospitality Group. The Irvine-based brokerage and research firm said the San Diego region’s biggest hotel sale of 2016 by price involved the 372-room San Diego Marriott La Jolla in University Towne Center, purchased in July by New York-based Carey Watermark Investors 2 Inc. for more than $130.8 million. The biggest local hotel by room count that sold during 2016 was the 419-room Crowne Plaza San Diego in Mission Valley, which was acquired in December by Brighton Management of Diamond Bar for approximately $49 million. California as a whole saw hotel property sales volume decline 30 percent, to just over $6.64 billion, as the number of deals dropped from 389 to 322. For 2017, Atlas is projecting that total sales volume statewide will decline again, by between 10 and 20 percent from 2016, with the number of transactions expected…
Record Development Pace Fuels California Supply Worries
HotelNewsNow.com 02/14/17 Record Development Pace Fuels California Supply Worries California again proves to be a popular state for hotel development, but those in the industry are keeping a watchful eye on the amount of new supply coming in. By Bryan Wroten http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/115526/Record-development-pace-fuels-California-supply-worries REPORT FROM THE U.S.—The latest California Hotel Development Survey by Atlas Hospitality Group shows the Golden State continues to attract record amounts of new development, but that high is tinged with concerns about overbuilding in some areas. Developers finished construction on 38 new hotels last year in California, representing 5,572 new rooms, according to the survey. There were an additional 112 hotels with 17,623 rooms under construction, an 11% year-over-year increase from 2015. Beyond that, there are 679 hotels in the state with 102,821 rooms in other stages of planning, a 39% year-over-year increase in room count. Looking at the development pipeline, Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group, said he expects 2017 will surpass 2016 in terms of hotels opening and under construction. If the economy continues to grow and business is good, the markets will absorb the new rooms, he said. An increase in interest rates and an economic slowdown would have a dampening effect,…
DoubleTree Suites in Dana Point Debuts $8 Million Renovation
The Orange County Register 02/10/17 DoubleTree Suites in Dana Point Debuts $8 Million Renovation By Hannah Madans http://www.ocregister.com/articles/hotel-743617-suites-resort.html A DoubleTree hotel in Dana Point has debuted an $8 million renovation that has refreshed its guest suites, gathering spaces and outdoor lounges. The hotel, at 34402 Pacific Coast Highway, has 196 renovated suites and gathering spaces capable of holding as many as 400 people. The renovation blended the styles of a beach house and a boutique hotel, said Bill Reider, the general manager of DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel Doheny Beach, in a statement. The hotel industry had a busy 2016 with seven hotels opening, according to Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group. Of the seven, four were in the Anaheim Resort District. A handful of hotels announced large scale renovations as well. The Waterfront Beach Resort, a Hilton property just across the street, finished a $140 million financing deal to add a suites-only tower. Irvine-based Robert Mayer Corp., which owns the 290-room resort, will add a nine-story, 152-room all-suites resort tower, a restaurant, ocean view lounge, pool deck and event lawn on an adjacent 3.5-acre parcel south of the hotel. In January, Irvine-based Pacifica Hotels announced that it had assumed operations…
Anaheim Breaks Visitor Record, with Crowds Flocking to Disneyland and Convention Center
Los Angeles Times 02/09/17 Anaheim Breaks Visitor Record, with Crowds Flocking to Disneyland and Convention Center By Hugo Martin http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-anaheim-visitors-20170208-story.html Several bustling conventions, a slew of new hotels and an army of Disneyland fans helped the city of Anaheim draw a record 23 million visitors last year, tourism officials said. The 2016 record, a 2.3% increase over 2015, represents the fourth year in a row that Anaheim has exceeded its previous high total. Tourism officials announced last month that Los Angeles County hosted a record 47.3 million visitors in 2016, a 4% increase over the previous year. Airlines and hotels across the country are also reporting healthy demand growth. Anaheim officials attribute the boost in visitors to an improved economy, the opening of four new hotels, record-setting attendance at several conventions held in the city and big crowds at Disneyland’s 60th anniversary celebration. International visitors from Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand helped bolster Anaheim’s tourism numbers. “More hotels were proposed and built, theme park expansion was announced, the number of breweries doubled — paving the way for us to welcome even more visitors to our awe-inspiring city,” said Jay Burress, chief executive of Visit Anaheim, the nonprofit that…
