Accor expands in Poland
French-owned group Accor has acquired a 20% stake in 55-strong Polish hotel chain Orbis.
The three- and four-star properties, in 25 towns and cities around Poland, will be renovated and renamed under the Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure, Ibis and Etap banners.
They include the 330-bedroom Victoria hotel, the 230-bedroom Europejski and the 730-bedroom Forum, all in Warsaw, and the 300-bedroom Continental and 275-bedroom Forum, both in Krakow.
Sales at Orbis's hotel are about 190m euros (£117m) a year.
Accor will add the properties to the five it already has in Poland and ten more that are being built.
Accor led a consortium that included investment and development companies. Together they bought the 37.5% of the capital's shares put up for sale by the Polish government.
The government continues to hold a 6% stake and the remainder of the company trades on the Polish stock exchange.
The new came as Accor unveiled a 16.2% increase in overall sales to 3.3b euros (£2b) in the six months to the end of June.
Its hotels division recorded sales up by 31.6%, including a 6.6% increase from existing hotels and a 22.4% increase from acquisitions. The restaurants and catering division saw sales rise by 5.6%.
Occupancy in Accor's UK hotels was down by half a percentage point to 70.3% and average room rate down by 5.3%, resulting in a drop in 5.9% revenue per available room (revpar).
However, Accor said the UK properties would have recorded a 3.7% rise in revpar had it not been for the impact of new openings.
The Netherlands put in the best performance, with a 14.7% rise in revpar and an occupancy level of 76.2%. Average room rate there was up by 15.2%.
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