Dominvs Group and contractor McAleer & Rushe have signed the first in a series of phased United Kingdom hotel contracts worth in excess of £100 million ($153 million).
The first agreement is a £26-million ($39.6-million) contract for two hotels in Aberdeen, Scotland, the 193-room Holiday Inn Express and 165-room Crowne Plaza Aberdeen Airport, with the properties due to open in June and September of this year, respectively. The next £25-million ($38-million) contract will be for a 306-room Holiday Inn in Manchester. Also on the cards are a £25-million ($38-million), 200-room conversion of the Grade II-listed Tower Bridge Magistrates Court close to the southern end of London Bridge.
More projects in London, and one in Oxford, are due to be announced shortly.
Deutsche Bank AG’s asset-management unit said its real estate deals rose 65% to a record volume last year as investors sought commercial properties in Germany, according to Bloomberg.
Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management bought buildings valued at about €2.4 billion ($2.9 billion) last year and sold approximately €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) of properties. Germany’s largest single-asset deal of 2014 was the €800-million ($954.7-million) sale of Frankfurt’s Palais Quartier mall, office and hotel complex, according to JLL.
The deals were done by Germany-based mutual funds and special funds for institutional investors, and most of the transactions involved buildings in Germany.
HNN launches its in-depth look at what hotels in the year 2020 might look like.
Included in the 17-piece content package:
- an animated walkthrough of what the hotel stay of the future might look like;
- how millennials will change travel during the next five years;
- a bevy of bold predictions from the HNN staff;
- and much, much more.
Enjoy!
Shareholders of Irish hotel company Dalata unanimously agreed to the company’s €455-million ($546-million) takeover of nine hotels from the Moran Bewley’s group, as reported by HNN on 18 December.
According to the Irish Times, a general meeting held by Dalata on Monday announced that the company hopes the deal would be cleared by the Irish government’s Competition & Consumer Protection Commission by the end of January and that it will issue 18.3 million new shares at €2.75 ($3.30) each to part finance the deal.
The Caribbean island nation of The Bahamas has cut its 10% hotel tax to 7.5% in an effort to woo more tourists, according to Travel Weekly.
The new sales tax/value-added tax rates imposed by the Bahamas Ministry of Finance will be charged on hotels and home rentals, as well as services purchased by guests, according to the report.
The 2.5% tax savings indicates the government’s determination to make a Bahamas vacation a value for money spent, according the country’s Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe.
Compiled by Terence Baker.