financial excesses

HOTEL NEWS
Maritim Hotel Köln
demonstrates the hotel operator’s sound business standing.
This becomes even more obvious when taking into consideration
the fact that the Maritim Hotel Mauritius was closed
from April through October 2009 for extensive renovation,
which of course influenced booking rates and total generated
sales. Maritim registered a booking rate of 53.1 percent in its
current 49 hotel operations, 13 of these in foreign countries.
Average room rates went down to EUR 77.42 from EUR 83.05
in the preceding year. The RevPAR for 2009 was at EUR 41.11,
thus EUR 5.31 under the prior year’s RevPAR of EUR 46.42.
¡Hola Ludwigsburg
In early April 2010, the Spanish hotel group NH Hoteles (Madrid)
opened its first property in Ludwigsburg at the Arena
Ludwigsburg put into operation in October 2009. The 3-star
NH Ludwigsburg will be managed under a lease agreement;
NH Hoteles had invested a total of more than EUR 10 million
into this project. The 3-star B&B hotel will offer its guests 130
rooms, a breakfast cafeteria, and a bar. In addition, there are
function rooms for up to 58 persons.
Courtyard by Marriott Basel opened
The Courtyard by Marriott Basel with 175 rooms on three
floors opened right outside Basel on March 1 of this year.
Facilities for events and conferences on a total expanse of 675
square meters encompass contemporarily furnished and multipartitionable
rooms with a foyer and top-to-bottom windows
for daylight illumination. The 260-sqm tri-partitionable conference
hall can accommodate up to 300 persons. Another
function room with a size of 113 square meters can be partitioned
into two rooms. And finally there’s a boardroom seating
up to 16 persons.
Number of rooms will be more than doubled
The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai will undergo extensive renovation
scheduled to last through early 2012. Construction work started
on April 15 of this year and will not interfere with on-going
hotel operations. A new hotel annex will raise the number of
available rooms to a total of 301. The resort on Jumeirah Beach
currently has 138 sea-view rooms on seven floors. The new
building annex will have 163 rooms, among these 16 suites as
well as two Royal Suites with a size of more than 180 square
meters each. In order to fulfill the needs particular to business
travelers, the resort will have an entirely new 1,160-sqm
event-staging area with a permanently-installed conference
room and three variable meeting rooms. The 800-sqm banquet
hall may be partitioned into six separate units.
Now 33 Grand City Hotels
The hotel management company Grand City Hotels (GCH)
launched eleven new hotels of their own Grand City Hotels
brand to the market as of March 1 of this year. Eight Mark
Hotels have been rebranded and are now doing business as
Grand City Hotels, and another three Best Western Mark
Hotels have had their names changed to Best Western Grand
City. As a consequence, the proprietary brand now operates a
total of 33 properties. Christian G. Windfuhr, CEO Grand City
Hotels Holland is confident that rebranding will enable the
company to exploit synergy effects and at the same time to
strengthen the Grand City Hotels brand. He also announced
that management plans to expand the group’s hotel portfolio
to 120 units in 2012.
14 2/2010