Firmin António, director general of Accor Latin America, São Paulo, is looking for more projects in South America. Following the opening of Sofitel Jequitimar Guarujá, Brazil, Accor has Sofitels coming up in Buenos Aires, Argentina and São Paulo—but António wants more.

San Antonio, Texas, is a fast-growing city, and more hotels are being developed there than anywhere else. Bruce Ford of Lodging Econometrics says that 44 hotels are at least on the drawing board and expect about an additional 7,360 keys. This number includes the 1,000-room Grand Hyatt Convention Center Hotel next to the Lila Cockrell Theater and Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. The hotel is slated for a 2008 opening, about 20 years after the idea was hatched. InterContinental Hotels Group will have its third Indigo in Texas, a conversion of the former Gibbs building at the Alamo, and a boutique hotel is being developed out of the former Neisner Department Store at East Houston Street and Broadway. San Antonio-based Santikos Development has sold three acres to InterMountain Management, Monroe, Louisiana, for a Courtyard by Marriott.

The Caribbean and Central America may well see a rash of Hiltons. Hilton Hotels Corp. has signed a strategic alliance agreement with Caribbean Property Group (CPG), New York City. CPG’s portfolio already includes The Ritz-Carlton San Juan Hotel, Spa and Casino and the Radisson Ambassador Hotel and Casino, both in Puerto Rico. Now, with Hilton, CPG will target Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Puerto Rico and Trinidad for a selection of Hilton brands.

Hilton has announced similar partnerships for the UK with Shiva Hotels Ltd., founded by Rishi Sachdev, CEO of Rising Star LLP, Guernsey, Channel Islands, and his father Ramesh Sachdev. One of the first developments will be a Hilton that the Sachdevs are building near London Heathrow’s forthcoming Terminal 5. Hilton also has a new “preferred development alliance” for Russia with London & Regional Hotels, London, owners of the London Hilton on Park Lane, the Trafalgar Hilton, London, and the Frankfurt Hilton. L&R, led by former optomotrist Ian Livingston, who lives in Monte Carlo, and his brother, surveyor Richard Livingstone, who is actually based in Cape Town, announced way back in March that, under its Moscow director, David Geovanis, it was already developing in Voronezh, Samara, Saratov, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd, Omsk, Ufa and Perm. The first L&R Hilton, of whichever brand, will be in Novosibirsk.

So what else is happening, outside of the Hilton world? In France, a consortium of 73 hospitality professionals, owners of single-unit hotels and restaurants, owns the 12-year old SIGHOR group, based in Clermont-Ferrand (led by CEO Bernard Gorce, they see such involvement as a way to make more money than would be possible from their own properties). As well as running 17 motorway service stations, SIGHOR already has five ACE hotels in central France and as soon as 12 are open it will open itself to franchising worldwide. ACE hotels have exteriors suitable for the locale but interiors are standardized. All have 56 bedrooms measuring 250 sq. ft. (23 sq.m). There are no fitness or dining facilities but a full cooked breakfast is offered. Free wireless connectivity throughout and a price of only €35 per night (plus €7 for breakfast) are quickly attracting business from France’s many other convenience hotels.

With the exception of game lodges, little is heard of development in Africa, but now that Libya is opening up that could well change. So far there is only one international hotel in Libya, the 300-room Corinthia Bab Africa in Tripoli. It runs at 100% occupancy. If an oil conference is cancelled at the last minute, rooms are immediately sold on to those on the wait-list who had been forced to lodge elsewhere. The hotel is owned by Malta-based Corinthia Palace Hotel Co. Ltd, which developed it with Libya’s Libyan Foreign Investment Company. The Libyan company now states that it intends to have the best hotel in every one of the 54 capital cities throughout the African continent.

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