Hilton Taking Over NoMad Brand

The DJIA was down 43 points but Nasdaq was up 37, the S&P 500 rose 6 points and the 10 year treasury yield was down .01 to under 4.36%. Lodging stocks were mixed. The only mover of note was SLNA, trading down to another all-time low, under a dime a share, down another -11% today.

Hilton has acquired a majority controlling interest in Sydell Group to expand the NoMad Hotels brand from its existing London flagship location to high-end markets around the globe. Sydell will be responsible for design, branding, and management of the NoMad brand while Hilton will lead all development. The NoMad brand will be fully integrated into Hilton’s commercial platforms, including Hilton Honors. All NoMad properties will remain independently owned. NoMad Las Vegas is excluded from the transaction and will rebrand to a new flag in the coming months. Hilton projects that as many as 100 NoMad properties will be developed globally over time, with approximately 10 already in advanced stages of discussion with Sydell. Analysts were pleased with this news, with Truist noting that Hilton has lagged its peers in the luxury space and that addition in luxury lifestyle fills an important gap for HLT, especially for Hilton Honorsredemptions. HLT did not disclose financial details.

HSBC upped their target price on Hilton to $254 from $219. They maintained their Buy rating.

B.Riley Securities initiated coverage on Airbnb with a Neutral rating. Their price target is $150.

Truist said they are still projecting 2024 full-service hotel profit margins will be flattish to down. They gave their April Hotel P&L Analyzer, saying year to date, US hotel profits are down -100 basis points year over year with cost growth remaining greater than revenue growth for many hotels. Truist said Group full-service hotels are relative outperformers, lower-priced hotels are underperforming.

STR reported US lodging data for the week ended 3/30. RevPAR was down 6.3% with the weekend really taking the hit. For the week, occupancy was down -5.6% year over year. The decline was due to the Easter shift which was March 31 this year and April 9th in 2023.

First Bristol Corporation and Kempenaar Real Estates, Inc. will soon unveil the multi-million dollar, newly updated Hampton Inn & Suites Newport-Middletown, located in Middletown, Rhode Island. Closed to the public since December, the renovated hotel is set to reopen in early April. The renovation will offer guests a full renovation of each of the 95 guestrooms and suites. The renovation is part of a $7.5 million investment in the Hampton Inn & Suites property, and its neighboring sister hotel, Homewood Suites by Hilton, which is receiving interior updates to common spaces, guestrooms, and bathrooms. The Hampton Inn & Suites and Homewood Suites by Hilton offer an array of amenities including an expanded fitness center, indoor pool, business center, and meeting and social space.

Sky Rock Sedona announced its debut following an extensive property-wide transformation and transition to a Tribute Portfolio hotel by Marriott. Managed by Remington Hospitality, the 109-room boutique hotel boasts a buzzy dining hotspot, lobby retail store, on-call pet psychic; wellness & destination-centric experiences, an outdoor pool, and two gathering spaces.

Noble Investment Group wants to build a new Marriott extended stay-style hotel near the intersection of Market Street and Military Cutoff Road in Ogden, North Carolina. The four-story Marriott StudioRes hotel would be situated on 3.5 acres of land and would provide 124 studio-style rooms. Public spaces in the hotel would include a communal table, a fitness room, guest-paid laundry, a covered patio, and a vending area. The hotel would also include 129 parking spaces.

With a surge in tourism in Texas, IHG Hotels & Resorts announced plans to open 13 new Texas properties in 2024 across key cities like Austin, Fort Worth, Waco, San Antonio, and more. The new properties opening in 2024 include: Hotel Indigo Irving - Las Colinas in Irving; InterContinental San Antonio; Kimpton San Antonio; EVEN, Austin; EVEN, Waco; avid Austin NW Lakeline; avid Fort Worth Downtown; Holiday Inn Express Anna - McKinney Area; Holiday Inn Express Waco Downtown; Holiday Inn Express Frisco North; Holiday Inn Austin Airport; Holiday Inn Express Haltom City - Ft. Worth; and Atwell Suites, Austin.

Coming on the heels of announced plans to build a neighboring ice arena, developers are planning a third hotel for Mohawk Harbor in Schenectady, New York. The Galesi Group plans to build a Hyatt House hotel on the north side of the harbor. The new hotel will be five stories and include 100 rooms, an indoor pool, fitness facility, a bar with an outdoor patio, and a 50-person meeting room.

Loews Hotels is pitching the idea of building a hotel featuring at least 500 rooms on the Downtown side of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The project, estimated at more than $400 million, would feature meeting rooms, a ballroom, a pool and fitness space, a restaurant and bar, and an outdoor event space. Several levels would connect directly into the convention center.

A new Cobblestone Hotel and Suites celebrated a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Cullman, Alabama. The 63-room hotel offers a pool, fitness center, a 16-person conference room, and a full-service steakhouse restaurant. This is the first partnership of Cobblestone Hotels and Suitesand Wissota Chophouse.

Hallmark Hospitality unveiled plans for a boutique hotel at 901 West Broadway in Vancouver, BC. The 12-story tower will feature 151 guestrooms and a three-level parking garage.

In Las Vegas, Nevada, a 46-floor, 486-room King David hotel is being proposed by RK Vegas Circle, LLC. At just over half an acre, developers want to squeeze a lot into the site, including a synagogue near the top of the tower, and five levels of underground parking that will still be more than 300 spaces short of the 854 that are needed. Hotel rooms and suites are planned for floors 14 through 40. Restaurants, personal services, convention/meeting rooms, and the synagogue are planned for floors 42-46.

Developers Jas Bhogal and Thomas Calus are proposing to redevelop the Alexandria Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. The proposal is to retain and restore the hotel’s façade, demolish the deteriorated building behind that façade, and build a new 12-story, 150 room hotel in its place.

The Plasencia Group represented the seller in the sale of the 134-key Courtyard Fort Myers at 1-75 and Gulf Coast Town Center and the 106-key SpringHill Suites Fort Myers Airport.

Sonnenblick-Eichner Company, on behalf of Valencia Hotels Group, has arranged $19.5 million of first mortgage debt to refinance the Texican Court hotel in Irving, Texas. The non-recourse five-year, fixed-rate loan was funded by a Wall Street investment bank. The loan is interest-only for the entire term at an interest rate of 7.74%, which included a buydown of the rate required by the lender. The 152-room upscale boutique hotel offers a full restaurant, poolside bar, 3,228 square feet of indoor meeting space, 9,028 square feet of outdoor event space, a fitness center, pool, outdoor fire pits, and a beer garden.

Omni Hotels & Resorts was hit with a chain-wide outage that brought down its IT systems starting on Friday. The last news reports suggested they still were having a severe impact on reservation, hotel room door locks, and point of sale systems. The hotels are open but social media has been reporting a real tough time for employees and guests as they try to maneuver through this. Their last update was given on X on Monday, saying their technology teams continue to work on restoring their systems that are currently down.