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Rockville, Maryland-based Choice Hotels International has agreed to acquire Radisson Hotel Group’s U.S. division, Radisson Hotel Group Americas, for approximately $675 million, HNN's Terence Baker reports. The deal consists of 624 hotels across nine brands and with approximately 68,000 rooms.

The release said the deal “strengthens Choice’s ability to provide a more holistic product offering across segments and continue to capitalize on consumer trends expected to fuel future demand for travel such as remote work, increasing retirements and road trips.” The agreement is expected to close in the second half of this year.

Frasers Property, the Singapore-based real estate investment trust, has announced it will take its wholly owned hotel and hospitality division Frasers Hospitality Trust public, with its shares valued at 70 Singaporean cents ($0.50). The division’s hotel brands include Malmaison, Hotel du Vin and Capri by Fraser, and its portfolio has 68 hotels and serviced apartments.

Frasers said the scheme, first discussed in April, “represents the best option for [shareholders] to unlock immediate value of their investments at a premium to [net asset value].” Choo Leong Loo, group chief financial officer, added “hospitality remains one of our core businesses. This transaction will allow [our] group to increase its investment in hospitality assets at locations that we are already familiar with.”

Investors and hoteliers speaking at the recent NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference in New York City said the industry faces challenges from increases in interest rates, the higher cost of debt and a drop in consumer confidence around the possibility of an upcoming recession, but the industry’s continuing strong performance is providing much confidence, at least in the U.S., writes Hotel News Now’s Stephanie Ricca.

“There’s still plenty of capital out there. It’s still pretty cheap money. It was free money, and now you have to pay for it, but that’s OK. ... My view has been that there’s no better place to be in a recession than hospitality because it’s going to improve every day as the market gets better and you reprice every day,” said Michael Lipson, CEO and chairman of the board of Access Point Financial.

Gross domestic product in the United Kingdom fell for the second month in a row, according to the Office For National Statistics. The 0.3% decline in April follows a 0.1% decline in March. The country is technically not in a recession, which is defined as two consecutive quarterly declines in GDP, with the last three months to the end of April showing a an increase of 0.2%.

GDP in production, construction and services fell by 0.6%, 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively — the first time all three categories have been in decline since January 2021. Tony Danker, director-general for the Confederation of British Industry, told the BBC he expects the U.K. "economy to be pretty much stagnant. … It won’t take much to tip us into a recession, and even if we don’t, it will feel like one for too many people.”

Austrian owner and management company Falkensteiner Michaeler Tourism Group said it will commit approximately 300 million euros ($315 million) to renovating, repositioning and developing two sites it owns on the Croatian island of Krk close to the city of Rijeka, according to Total Croatia News.

The firm has 30 hotels in seven European countries, and in luxury camping sites, one more of which it plans for Krk.

“After a couple of years, we are once again investing a lot in Croatia because we see the potential for our premium products, and in addition to increasing quality in all hotels from four to five stars,” said the company’s co-owner and executive director Otmar Michaeler.

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