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1. Braemar sells Pier House Resort for $190 million
Hotel real estate investment trust Braemar Hotels & Resorts has sold for $190 million the 142-key Pier House Resort & Spa to Sixth Street, CoStar News' Sean McCracken reports. Sixth Street completed with deal in partnership with Riller Capital.
The property sits on 5 acres of land on Duval Street in Key West. It offers two oceanfront dining venues, a full-service spa, a fitness center, an oceanfront pool, 75 linear feet of private beach frontage and approximately 3,000 square feet of meeting and event space.
This is Braemar's latest sale as it moves forward with its plan to separate from its external adviser, Ashford Inc. In June, the REIT said it had planned two to three more hotel dispositions to pay off its $480 million advisory agreement termination fee and $25 million master agreement termination fee
2. Mount Etna eruption, Japanese rains disrupt thousands of travelers
Eruptions of Mount Etna in Italy and heavy rains in Japan have led to major travel disruptions in the respective countries.
The latest set of eruptions of Mount Etna near Sicily started Aug. 6, the New York Times reports. While such eruptions are not unusual for the volcano, the "sustained and continuous emission of ash" has been. The ash combined with steady southwest winds has caused the international airport in Catania to cancel more than 700 flights over the past week.
Record rainfall and, as a result, flooding in Japan left thousands stranded at Tokyo's Narita airport, Reuters reports. Flooding has disrupted transportation, knocked out power and killed eight people trapped in a vehicle. More than 14 inches of rain fell within 24 hours in parts of the Chiba area near Tokyo.
3. Hotel execs on how performance, projections lined up in 2026
Even with the best of information available, travelers can behave in unexpected ways. During an opening session at the recent Hotel Data Conference, hotel executives spoke about how their respective portfolios performed this year compared to their expectations, CoStar News Hotels reports.
Pyramid Global Hospitality took a conservative approach with its hotels in FIFA World Cup host markets, said Brian Berry, chief commercial officer at Pyramid. It hosted some teams, had good room blocks and correctly expected the events to drive rate. There were, however, a few surprises, including underestimating how non-World Cup cities would perform.
“In fact, when you look in June alone, 12 of the top 14 occupancy growth markets were not World Cup markets,” he said.
4. UK closes three asylum seeker hotels
The United Kingdom's government said three hotels that housed asylum seekers have closed in its effort to move people into alternative accommodations, the BBC reports. The hotels returned to their owners are the Metropole Hotel on Blackpool Promenade, the Britannia Ashley Hotel in Hale, Altrincham, and the Chimney House in Sandbach, Cheshire.
Border Security and Asylum minister Anna Turley said this will save public money and make progress on the government's pledge to stop using hotels for asylum seekers by 2029.
5. US wage growth behind pace of inflation again
While the pace of inflation in the U.S. slowed from 3.5% in June to 3.4% in July, it was still ahead of wage growth, Business Insider reports. Wage growth amounted to 3.2% in July, its lowest increase since 2021, marking the fourth consecutive month inflation has increased over earnings.
"Even if you're making more money numbers-wise, with the way prices are rising, you have less money left over at the end of the month," ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud said. "That's really going to impact the large consumer base of America, middle- and low-income households, who are really dependent on wage growth to help them remain economically viable."