Four Seasons in Colorado: The Four Seasons is coming to Mountain Village, Colorado, after receiving a go ahead from the Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association board of directors who recently approved a purchase-sale agreement with developers Merrimac Ventures. The hotel will also include a restaurant and spa. No timeline for construction or completion has been publicly announced yet.
More from the Telluride Daily Planet
Pebblebrook completes sale: Pebblebrook Hotel Trust has closed on the sale of the 416-room Kimpton Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, California, to an unnamed third party, generating US$157.6 million of net proceeds after customary closing costs. The company initially purchased the hotel for US$90 million in 2010 as its second hotel. Proceeds from the sale will be utilized for general business purposes, which may include reducing outstanding debt.
Riu plans in Chicago: A venture of Spanish-based Riu Hotels & Resorts plans to develop a 388-room hotel in Chicago. The Prime Group’s Michael Reschke told Crain’s Chicago Business that Riu had hired him to develop the building, expected to cost somewhere under US$200 million. The hotel should break ground this summer. It plans to fund the project, known as the Riu Grand Plaza Hotel, with cash rather than line up a construction loan, which might be difficult to obtain while the pandemic impacts the lodging market.
AHLA touts EB-5 legislation: The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) has announced its support for the renewal of the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2021, a piece of federal legislation which current expires June 30, 2021. The program was initially created to attract capital from foreign individuals who meet specific investment and job creation requirements. In the past, EB-5 investments have filled funding gaps and provided capital for local economic development projects that create and support jobs, infrastructure, and businesses across the country. Since its inception, the EB-5 Regional Center Program has drawn in more than US$41 billion in global capital investment to support American businesses and created “more than 820,000 job opportunities for U.S. workers.”
British summer holiday travel curtailed: Holidays to some of the UK traveler’s most popular destinations, including Spain, Greece and Turkey, will require pre-travel testing and at least three days of quarantine, according to new data. The plans of tens of thousands of British travelers could be disrupted by the news as the prospect of unfettered overseas travel by the summer recedes, with only a dozen countries set to be added to the “green” list in May. Spain, which alone welcomes 18 million Britons in a normal year, is to be added to a putative “amber” list when the British government introduces its new four-tier traffic light system for the resumption of holidays abroad. Cyprus could join it on the “amber” list, according to a recent analysis.
New lockdown for Mumbai: India’s health ministry said Monday that it has recorded an all-time high 103,558 new coronavirus cases, the highest daily tally this year in the South Asian nation. Mumbai, India’s financial capital and the capital of Maharashtra state, is now under stringent lockdown measures. About half of the country’s new cases of the virus were recorded in Maharashtra. Only two nations have more confirmed cases than India, which currently has more than 12.5 million infections, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The United States has 30.7 million cases, while Brazil has close to 13 million infections.
Hawaii’s short-term rental occupancy outpacing hotels: Since October, Hawaii’s vacation rental market has come back from the COVID-19 shutdown, outperforming statewide hotel occupancy every month, according to a new report. Vacation rental owners and operators say the gains have been driven by pent-up demand for travel. Pandemic-related attitude changes also have sparked a desire in some for lodging that offers more private amenities and kitchens large enough to allow people to prepare their own food and socially distance while they eat it. Also, the coronavirus-related reduction in some hotel services, such as daily housekeeping, has reduced the service gap between hotels and vacation rentals.