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Madrid-based private-equity firm Azora has closed its latest and largest hotel-property fund, raising 815 million euros ($945.1 million) in total commitments plus additional co-investment capital, “implying a 36% increase over the original 600 million euros target.”

The Azora European Hotel & Lodging, F.C.R., fund initially had a hard cap of 750 million euros, but the increase has allowed it to accommodate new investors, “comprising a large European pension fund, two large insurance companies (based in Europe and the U.S.) and two European family offices,” according to Property Funds World.

Taking financial leverage into account, this provides Azora an implied total investment capacity of more than 1.8 billion euros from the fund, of which approximately 730 million euros has already been committed through four hotel transactions.

U.S. hotel industry occupancy for the week ending Sept. 25 was relatively flat compared to the prior week, and down 11% from the comparable week in 2019, according to the latest weekly data from STR, CoStar's hospitality analytics firm. Average daily rate for U.S. hotels was up slightly week to week, but still down 2% from 2019.

"A week after eclipsing 1 million for the first time since the earliest days of the pandemic, group demand rose again to almost 1.3 million for the week. At the same time, group ADR moved past $200 for the first time since February 2020," STR stated in a news release.

Labor is affecting hotel-industry revenue management like never before, as the past 20 months of pandemic-era operations have increased pressure on inventory, housekeeping and strategy, Hotel News Now’s Sean McCracken reports from the 2021 HSMAI Revenue Optimization Conference.

Garine Ferejian-Mayo, chief commercial officer at Sonesta Hotels, said more hotels are becoming reliant on outsourced labor, particularly in housekeeping and at the front desk, which adds pressure on people in data-driven roles to make sure they’re offering the right compensation packages and also pricing rooms correctly to remain profitable in the face of labor cost increases.

“When you look at the bottom line, we’re not able to deliver to our stakeholders in the ownership group if rates are too low,” she said.

Despite easing COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in key destinations such as Kenya, low vaccination rates in East Africa have kept most tourists at bay — and tourism and hospitality workers out of jobs, the New York Times reports. As a result, those employees have had to turn elsewhere to make a living.

More than 2 million international tourists visited Kenya in 2019 — a record number — but that number dropped to 579,600 in 2020, and in the first half of 2021 is just over 300,000, the Times reports.

Lower demand for attractions and accommodations has resulted in layoffs, and forced longtime hospitality workers to take odd jobs and borrow money to survive.

“I have not had any work since March 2020, nothing at all. Everything dried up when the borders closed,” said Caroline Onyango, who has worked in tourism for over 15 years. “Domestically, safaris are picking up in Kenya little by little, but it’s very competitive and us overlanders will not have work until cross-country travel restarts.”

The United Kingdom’s furlough scheme closes today with nearly 1 million workers still in the program, BBC News reports. Since the pandemic began, the furlough scheme helped pay wages for 11.6 million workers.

The country still has a record-number of job vacancies, the article states. Maike Currie, head of personal finance and markets content for Fidelity International, told the news agency that “no-one really knows what is next.”

"I think what we can be certain of is that we'll see under-employment, where employees return to work but possibly not on a full-time basis and that they might need to supplement their income," she said.

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