News & Stories

Minneapolis/Brussels. After five years of losses and a correction in its strategy, Carlson Rezidor now continues with its expansion: Two new brands will expand its portfolio and target group, and these will be in the luxury and the newly created "Lifestyle Select" segment. The licence contracts with Regent Hotels and Missoni were/will be capped. The same applies for hotel lease contracts. "The turnaround and the good balance sheet figures from last year confirm our path on Route 2015," President and CEO Wolfgang Neumann said on Wednesday in an interview with hospitalityInside.com. The details.

Stockholm/Oslo. Swedish Scandic has entered into an agreement to acquire Norwegian Rica Hotels. With the addition of 72 Rica hotels to its existing portfolio, Scandic further strengthens its position as the leading hotel chain in the Nordic region. After the merger Scandic's portfolio will encompass 223 hotels.

Eschborn. Best Western Germany has once again revised its expansion strategy in Germany after the painful loss of 25 operations in 2013. Alongside expansion within the known segments, also including expansion within the resort hotel segment, the group is now astonishingly placing focus on smaller operations with less than 50 rooms. This has been taboo up to now; there had to be at least 50 rooms. Apparently, the Wyndham deal with Grand City Hotels has clearly shaken the success-spoilt team at Best Western Germany. First, seven Grand City Hotels that had chosen Best Western as a franchise partner left the group and switched to the American Wyndham chain, the new Grand City partner. In the course of the year, an additional seven Best Western Hotels followed. Then came along the loss of four former Queens properties that were bought – in a package – from Fattal Group and are now operating under their Leonardo brand.

Paris. Accor, Club Med, Euro Disney, Pierre & Vacances and SNCF belong among the 19 members of the "Alliance 46.2, Entreprendre en France pour le Tourisme" that was newly founded in Paris at the beginning of February.

Delhi. Who better to buyback Amanresorts than the very founder Adrian Zecha? With Zecha having just bought back the chain from DLF, India’s leading land developer, the long speculation over who will own Amanresorts, is finally laid to rest, perhaps for good. But Zecha is back with a financing partner.

Vienna. Strange things have occurred in Vienna since Monday: With an emotional PR paper, Russian Elena Baturina informed the public that she was separating from her manager, Martinez Holding AG. Baturina owns four hotels, including the Grand Tirolia in Austria. As a result, Martinez's Managing Director Michael Regner applied for the insolvency of the Austrian Martinez Hotel GmbH this past Thursday: This also belongs to Baturina.

Munich. Bitter pill for Kempinski: The luxury hotel chain will have to give up the Kempinski Hotel Airport Munich at the end of the year - after 20 years. A successor has already been lined up. There's also obviously been a decision about the new hotel operator in Munich Leopoldstrasse.

London. Preferred Hotel Group announced its year-end results. The number of members and results increased, accompanied by a clear increase of services for the hotels.

Lausanne. As the Peer-to-Peer platforms are increasingly feeling the backlash, providers are beginning to react. HouseTrip, a company offering high-quality private and holiday apartments mostly at the same price as a hotel room, has now conducted a survey among 1,000 Germans to show the importance of reasonably priced holiday deals.

Interlaken. If the Advisory Board is to be believed, the Victoria-Jungfrau Collection is about to be sold to Aevis Holding SA after the latter recently increased its offer. Rival Swiss Private Hotel AG was thrown out of the race with this bid.