Hotel News Now each week features a news roundup from a different region of the world. This week’s compilation covers Europe.

A consortium of investors from Qatar have agreed to acquire a 10.8% stake in French hotel firm Accor, which gives the entire lifestyle division a nominal transaction value of approximately €200 million ($211 million).

The deal is due to be closed by the end of 2022. In a recent video interview with HNN, Sharan Pasricha, founder and co-CEO of Ennismore, said the division has 14 brands, 100 hotels in operation and approximately 200 assets in the pipeline.

Brussels-based Radisson Hotel Group has agreed to sell its entire Americas portfolio to Choice Hotels International for approximately $675 million, a deal that will add to Choice’s portfolio 624 hotels and more than 68,000 rooms.

The deal will be funded by a combination of cash on hand and borrowing from an existing credit facility. Radisson’s CEO Federico González said his firm is committed to expanding the reach of its global operations and doubling its portfolio in the Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific markets by 2025.

Portuguese owner and operator Discovery Hotel Management has formed a new brand, Octant, from eight of its 18 properties.

Luís Mexia Alves, CEO of Discovery, said the offerings at the brand, which has a total of 515 rooms all in Portugal, will consist of “24-hour pools, 24-hour gyms ... the ability to check in and check out at no set time, utilize all the hotel’s facilities at all hours and, indeed, enjoy breakfast at any time of the day.”

Executives at Whitbread PLC, speaking during its first-quarter 2022 earnings call, said the ongoing interest in staycations in the United Kingdom has boosted bookings and revenue at its Premier Inn properties, the country’s most prominent hotel brand.

Hemant Patel, the firm’s CEO, said in year-over-year terms, the company’s first-quarter accommodation revenue was 31% ahead of pre-pandemic numbers across its entire portfolio and 21.3% ahead of pre-pandemic numbers in the U.K.

In other Whitbread news, the company announced its new CEO as Dominic Paul, taking over from Alison Brittain who announced her retirement timed with the end of the firm’s current financial year.

The hotel firm said Paul would begin in early January 2023. It is a return for the former Domino’s Pizza Group CEO, U.K. and Ireland, as he was CEO of former Whitbread division Costa Coffee when it was sold to Coca-Cola in August 2018 for 3.9 billion pounds sterling ($5.1 billion).

• German owner Primestar Group is to open its first international hotel when in 2024 it debuts the 358-room Hampton by Hilton Vienna City West, the largest of the brand in Europe;
  
• French hotel firm Experimental Group has acquired the 27-room Le Garage and adjacent 72-room The Regina in Biarritz, France, the first two assets it has acquired with its latest fund, which raised 350 million euro ($375.5 million);
• Cycas Hospitality has taken over the management of 161-room Bankside Hotel, in London’s South Bank district. The hotel, bought by Vertiq Capital this month, is part of Marriott International’s Autograph Collection;
  
• Accor is to open its third hotel in Croatia with the country debut of its Mövenpick brand. Opened on June 8 in the Croatian capital, the Mövenpick Zagreb has 104 rooms and is owned by MMPD, which also will open a second hotel of that brand in Split, Croatia, in 2024;
• Scandic Hotels Group and owner Pandox AB, both from Sweden, have agreed to extend leases on 12 hotels in Sweden, two hotels in Norway and another in Finland, which have a combined 3,598 rooms;
  
• Rosewood Hotels & Resorts is to manage Venice’s Hotel Bauer when it reopens in 2025 following a renovation to begin this November. Owned by Signa Prime Selection, the Grand Canal hotel, which first opened in 1880, is expected to have approximately 110 rooms when the overhaul is finished;
• Warrington, England-based Bespoke Hotels has bought all three hotels formerly owned and operated by Scottish group McMillan Hotels. The assets, all in Scotland and that have been in the McMillan family for more than 60 years, are the 72-room McMillan Hotel North West Castle, Stanraer; 56-room Cally Palace Hotel & Golf Course, Gatehouse of Fleet; and 36-room Fernhill Hotel, Portpatrick;
  
• IHG Hotels & Resorts is to enter Albania with the 2025 opening of the InterContinental Tirana, which is owned by the Geci Group. In the Albanian capital, the franchised asset will have approximately 300 rooms;

• Accor debuted its Pullman brand in Georgia with the opening of the 220-room Pullman Tbilisi Axis Towers, the highest building in the country’s capital. The hotel spans the buildings 19th to 35th floors.

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