UK quarantine starts February 15: UK residents returning from coronavirus hotspots abroad will have to quarantine in hotels starting February 15, the government has confirmed. Hotel owners will be asked to provide rooms for more than 1,000 new people every day, documents suggest. Passengers will have to stay in their rooms for 10 nights, with security guards accompanying if they go outside. The Labour party called the measures “too little, too late” to deal properly with new overseas strains of COVID. Quarantine hotels are expected to be set up near airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Rules will apply to UK nationals and residents returning to the country from 33 “red list” COVID-19 hotspots, including several South American and African countries — where new COVID variants have been detected in large numbers of people — and passengers will be expected to pay for the cost of the accommodation.
Tides faces foreclosure: Multiple sources are reporting that New York-based Chetrit Group, after at least six extensions, is facing foreclosure of its famed Ocean Drive Tides hotel on South Beach in Miami Beach, which has been closed since 2017. The complaint alleges that the Chetrit entities and Cuesta Construction failed to pay the mortgage due December 20. Chetrit secured a US$45 million mortgage for the hotel from Ocean Bank in 2014. In January, the debt was sold to an affiliate of Safe Harbor Equity, which is seeking the unpaid principal of nearly US$42 million.
At least 60 hotels in Bali for sale: At least 60 hotels across Bali are being put up for sale due to continued decline in occupancy rates, as the province reportedly hemorrhages about IDR10 trillion (US$711 million) in losses monthly amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Rai Suryawijaya, who heads the Badung chapter of the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI), said the number of hotels may continue to rise.
Waikiki hotel sells for US$8M: The Kai Aloha Hotel, an 18-room boutique hotel next door to the Trump International Hotel Waikiki, has sold to investors from Japan for US$8.1 million. The buyer, Pineland Co., is a real estate investment organization in Osaka, and the Waikiki property is its first investment in Hawaii. The seller was the family of the late En Harriet Chang, who ran the three-story hotel on Saratoga Road from the 1960s until her death in May 2019.
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Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index for January: The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index was down 8.2% in January to a level of 4,199.
“Hotel stocks pulled back in January and significantly underperformed the broader indices as the vaccine rollout and reopening narrative lost some momentum,” said Michael Bellisario, senior hotel research analyst and director at Baird. “The ‘pent-up demand’ thesis remains topical for bullish investors and industry participants, especially on the leisure travel front, but the more important intermediate- to long-term recovery needs to come from the business traveler, for which a rebound appears further out, in our opinion.”
“Performance for these openings months of the year will resemble some of the slowest of 2020,” said Amanda Hite, STR president. “Once vaccine distribution becomes more widespread and the pandemic numbers improve, we should see better travel conditions that will push recovery. Our latest forecast points to Q3 as the period with more meaningful recovery of corporate and group business.”
In January, the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index fell behind both the S&P 500 (-1.1%) and the MSCI US REIT Index (0.0%). The Hotel Brand sub-index dropped 9.1% from December to 7,239, while the Hotel REIT sub-index decreased 5.3% to 1,056.
Malaysian hoteliers urge assistance: The Malaysian Association of Hotels has urged the government to provide immediate assistance to the industry following the extension of the country’s restrictions, known as the movement control order (MCO), to February 18. The group said that since March of last year, more than 100 hotels had ceased operations, affecting over 7,000 employees and more who lost their jobs indirectly, with the rest either on prolonged pay cuts or unpaid leave. The hotel group has proposed additional assistance to the industry as well as a six-phase border reopening plan to allow the industry to receive international tourists again in stages.
India 2020 market review: Jointly prepared by Horwath HTL India and STR, this annual report analyzes hotel sector performance in an exceptionally challenged year marred by a global pandemic. It’s been a year of massive occupancy drops, as well as ADR and RevPAR declines. For a more realistic insight, the report presents performance for the pandemic period (March-December) and Q4-20, alongside the full year. Full year occupancy was 34.5%, the pandemic period was at 27.8%. However, Q4-20 gives some heart with improvement to 37.9%.