European recovery expected to boost UK hotels
The UK and European hotel investment markets are steadily recovering from the financial upheaval of the past five years, this year's annual Deloitte European Hotel Investment Conference said yesterday.
A host of investors, economists and hotel executives attended the 25th annual event at London's Dorchester Hotel to discuss the state of UK, European and global finances and their impact on investors in tourism, specifically hotels.
The overall message was of optimism after five years of gloom, with investors saying they were keen to look at London and the UK as a still-growing site for the leisure and hospitality industry.
It was also suggested that the luxury hotels market was poised for a significant boom over the coming few years.
Certain investors had differing opinions over whether the UK was an attractive investment opportunity as a whole, or should be considered separately to London.
While Host Hotels and Resorts vice president Struan Robertson insisted that it was still relevant to consider London as separate from the whole, his fellow panel-member Coley Brennan, from private equity firm KSL Capital Partners, said that his company had invested in hotels across the country, including in Edinburgh and the major Northern England towns, which were doing well and regularly seeing 80-90% occupancy.
He also revealed that KSL had recently taken over the formerly in-administration brands Malmaison and Hotel du Vin, a deal which the investor had been chasing for five years.
It was also suggested that a continued improvement in the Eurozone economies as a whole will mean promising investment opportunities for the UK market, and that the industry is already finding credit easier to come by now than it has done in the past few years.
As well as Deloitte global head advisory ion travel, hospitality and leisure, Nick Van Marken, keynote speakers also included economist Roger Bootle from Capital Economics.
Forum Report: International Hotel Investment Forum 2013 >>
