Read the latest hotel industry news from around Europe.

British hotel firm IHG Hotels & Resorts declared in its latest earnings results that, despite half-year and second-quarter revenue per available room still not quite up to 2019 levels, it would reintroduce a shareholder dividend and buy back shares to the value of $500 million, writes Hotel News Now’s Terence Baker.

The dividend payment is to be 43.9 cents per share, a level 10% higher than that of 2019, the last time the company announced a dividend, with the new one payable in October, executives told analysts during a conference call. RevPAR across its portfolio for the first half and second quarter of the year was down 10.5% and 4.5%, respectively, compared to 2019 levels.

RBH Hospitality Management, which has 44 hotels in the United Kingdom, has made its first moves internationally with the signing of a strategic alliance with Melbourne, Australia-based hotel management company Gatehouse Hospitality that will leverage the skill sets of both sides to propel growth in both markets.

David Hart, CEO at RBH, said he can see many similarities between the U.K. and Australia’s legal systems and hotel-industry business models. “We want to be proactive in finding and putting deals together. There is significant, potential investment from Asian investors into both the U.K. and Australia, and this alliance is also an excellent way of tapping into this,” he said.

The 20-room Fernie Castle Hotel, which was in the Fernie family for approximately half a millennium until it was confiscated due to the family’s involvement in the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion, has been sold to Tianjin, China-based real-estate company MDJM for an undisclosed price. The property is central to the Chinese firm's plans to expand its interest in independent, historical hotels and properties.

Braveheart Hotels sold the property, 15 miles west of the famous golf courses of St. Andrews, for an undisclosed price to a wholly owned, U.K.-based subsidiary of MDJM, MD Local Global. The site covers 17 acres and contains woodland and a small lake known as a “lochan.”

The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has urged the world to impose a more widespread travel ban on citizens of Russian, which invaded Ukraine more than six months ago.

Currently it is difficult for Russians to travel internationally, since most of Europe and North America have banned Russian airlines from flying over. Zelensky said he believed the key step now is to close borders to place more barriers to Russian travel.

Whitbread PLC is investing more than 200 million pounds sterling ($236 million) in the acquisition of a freehold site in London and the construction of a Hub by Premier Inn hotel to open in 2027. The hotel firm has more than 800 Premier Inn assets in the United Kingdom, but so far it has only 13 operating Hub hotels with a combined 2,431 rooms.

The acquisition of the site, at 5 The Strand, adjacent to Charing Cross Station and Trafalgar Square, has been funded by Whitbread cash reserves. A 205-room Park Hyatt hotel was announced for the site in 2019, a year after former owner ABIL Group bought it from BlackRock U.K. Property Fund.

• German real estate firm Union Investment has made its debut investment in Scandinavia with the acquisition of the 25hours Hotel Copenhagen Paper Island. With 128 rooms, the hotel is part of the regenerated Paper Island cultural and entertainment project due to open in 2024;
  
• Spanish real estate investment trust Azora, via its the Azora European Hotel & Lodging Fund, has acquired the 401-room Sheraton Rhodes Resort on the Greek island of Rhodes. It is Azora’s first asset in the country, and the seller is Lampsa Hellenic Hotels S.A.;
  
• Fort Partners Puerto Rico LLC has bought the Palazzo Marini in Rome for 165 million euros ($168 million) and will start the process of transforming it into a Four Seasons-branded hotel with 100 rooms. No reopening date has been announced for the property, which dates to the mid-16th Century;
  
• Athens-based Prodea Investments (75%) and Jersey, Channel Islands-based Invel Real Estate (25%), which owns 98% of Prodea, have acquired ski resort Hotel Bellevue Cortina d’Ampezzo in Cortina, Italy, for 49 million euros ($49.8 million) and plans a 25 million euros ($25 million) renovation of the property. Parts of the 2026 Winter Olympics will take part in the destination;
  
• Radisson Hotel Group has debuted its Radisson Red brand in Poland with the 30-room Radisson Red Gdańsk in the city known as the birthplace of trade union Solidarity;
  
• Owner Aprirose has announced that one of its assets, the DeVere Selsdon Estate, in Croydon, South London, and which contains the 150-room Selsdon Park Hotel, is to become the second location for its lifestyle brand Birch and will reopen in 2023;
• Following initial investment in Madrid-based Room Mate in April, investment funds Westmont Hospitality Group and Angelo Gordon have now completed the acquisition of the firm in a court-approved deal that secures more than 400 jobs and assumes for the new owners 40 million euros ($40.67 million) in debt. Room Mate has 15 hotels;
  
• IHG Hotels & Reorts and owner ANA Hotels have signed a deal to operate the InterContinental Athénée Palace Bucharest in a 1914 building in the Romanian capital. Hilton will manage the 284-room hotel until the end of this year.
  

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