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1. Entertainment Group To Sell Stake in LA Live Hotels
Los Angeles-based entertainment group Anschutz Entertainment Group is working with JLL to sell part ownership of the interconnected J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels at L.A. Live to help fund more development, reports CoStar News' Jack Witthaus.
The hotels are part of the $2.5-billion, 5.6-million-square-foot L.A. Live entertainment complex.
"With demand currently very strong for high-quality hotel investment opportunities in marquee locations, we believe now is the right time to identify a partner to help us complete this project well in advance of upcoming major citywide events such as the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics,” Ted Fikre, vice chairman and chief legal and development officer of AEG, said in the statement.
2. Lunar New Year Travel Projected To Be Lower Than 2019
The Lunar New Year celebration in China and other Asian countries typically draws "the largest annual human migration on earth" for a weekslong travel rush, CNN reports, but this year that travel is expected to be much lower than pre-pandemic.
China's Ministry of Transportation expects 1.18 billion trips will be made for this year's Lunar New year travel period. While that's a 35% increase from 2021, it doesn't reach the 3 billion trips made in 2019.
Local authorities continue to discourage residents from taking trips amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. French Hotel Industry Copes With Wage Pressures, Operational Costs
The French hotel industry is facing chronic staffing shortages and negotiating pay raises with unions as well as calling on employers to improve working conditions, reports HNN contributor Tamara Thiessen.
Roughly 237,000 jobs were lost between February 2020 and February 2021 across France's hotel industry.
“It’s not that we don’t want to pay our workers more, but it’s a matter of our [hotels and other] establishments surviving. If we give too much, [they] won’t be able to [survive], unless the state helps us and lowers costs,” said Véronique Gaulon, national vice president of the catering section for hotel industry trade body the Union des Métiers et des Industries de l’Hôtellerie, or UMIH.
4. Global Growth Rate Projected To Shrink
The world's two largest economies, the U.S. and China, are projected to have "larger than expected" slowdowns because of rising inflation, supply-chain woes and staffing shortages, thus reducing the global growth rate, CNN reports.
According to the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Report, "the global economy enters 2022 in a weaker position than previously expected." The report projects global growth rate will be at 4.4%, a decline from the previously estimated 4.9% just three months ago.
5. As Prices Soar, Couples Reconsider Hotel Weddings
Americans are scaling back on bigger purchases to save money at time when inflation continues to rise, and this includes hotel weddings, which many couples have rebooked for 2022, the Wall Street Journal reports.
One couple was hoping to have a 30-person wedding in Sedona, Arizona, when their preferred hotel quoted about $20,000 for the celebration two years ago. When they inquired again this past October, the price had soared to nearly $54,000.
"The couple is instead having their wedding this year at a vacation rental in Sedona, and the entire event will cost about $15,000," the news outlet reports.