Briefing: Are alternatives now mainstream?

Osprey Equity Partners recently agreed to fund an £80m development of a GoNative aparthotel in East London. They are backed by LJ Partnership.

Alternative accommodation types like aparthotels and hostels are becoming increasingly attractive to investors. More in-depth data from historic transactions and long established properties in the sector, have given investors greater insight on which to base their decisions. This is slowly bringing more products into the mainstream, as our industry experts discuss in these videos:

A report by WATG released last year showed that one attractive element of aparthotels is the cost effectiveness to build. It states that on a site with an £17.5m acquisition cost, a 4 star hotel would take £28.2m to construct and a 4 star aparthotel only £27.2m. It also states that terminal value on the aparthotel would be £93.1m and only £82.3m on the hotel, where both have an exit yield of 5%.

Another difference between hotels and aparthotels highlighted by WATG is that, in an aparthotel, rooms division accounts for some 93% of revenues, whereas hotels take a large portion of revenue from F&B and other areas.

Finally, WATG’s report showed GOP margins of 63% and 49% for the respective aparthotel and hotel.

When completed the GoNative aparthotel will be a 21 storey property. GoNative will manage the property under a hotel management agreement.

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Video clips produced by ybc.tv for the Hospitality Channel, including interview from industry conferences such as the IHIF conference as well as specific Hospitality Channel shoots.

Briefing: How competing with Airbnb has impacted hospitality

Airbnb just keeps growing. According to the website it has now had 60 million guests, 2 million listings worldwide, and is used in 34,000 cities. Summer travel with Airbnb has grown 353 times over in 5 years. In summer 2015, nearly 17 million total guests stayed with Airbnb hosts.

Other couch surfing/ hosted accommodation sites include 9flats.com, homestay.com and couchsurfing.com.

What does the growth of this type of accommodation really mean for hospitality and how does the impact vary across sectors? Our experts discuss:

Competing with Airbnb is made more complex by the fact that it offers such a variety of accommodation types. It could compete with everything from a hostel to a luxury hotel. The accommodation on offer includes yurts, RVs, boats and castles. Airbnb appeals to both holiday makers and business travellers so can impact all corners of the market at different levels.

Airbnb is typically most popular in cities. Top destinations for business travel are San Francisco, CA, London, UK and New York City, NY, and Paris, France. At the beginning of this year Airbnb also released some statistic about more surprising destinations that are gaining momentum including Chūō-ku in Osaka, Japan which had 7000% Growth in 2015, Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which had 1200% Growth, and Poncey-Highland in Atlanta, GA which had 240% Growth.

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Video clips produced by ybc.tv for the Hospitality Channel, including interview from industry conferences such as the IHIF conference as well as specific Hospitality Channel shoots.

Briefing: Corporate travel demand is growing

According to Reuters, spending on business travel in Western Europe is expected to rise by over 6% in 2016. This is good news for serviced apartments and extended stay products, which see a lot of demand from this sector.

A report from the Association of Serviced Apartment Providers states that UK businesses registered an 86% increase in the use of serviced apartments in recent years. They also say that Booking.com is experiencing strong growth demand for serviced apartments.

These videos discuss corporate travel and serviced apartment demand:

A report by Accura Media Group found that four out of ten business travellers surveyed said they will travel more in 2016 than last year, while more than half say they will travel more than they did two years ago.

According to Reuters, Germany is the largest business travel market in western Europe at an estimated $57.9 billion, and spending is set to rise 9.5 percent in 2016.

In contrast a new report from the Global Business Travel Association found that business travel volume growth in US is slowing in 2016 due to global uncertainties, but the report still says there are reasons to be optimistic for 2017.

Association of Serviced Apartment Providers found that occupancy figure for serviced apartment across the whole of the UK were high. London was at 84% and the rest of the UK just slightly lower at 83.1%.

If you’ve been sent to this page and you’re not yet on the circulation list to receive these regular briefings and you would like to sign up, you can do see here. It’s free.

Video clips produced by ybc.tv for the Hospitality Channel, including interview from industry conferences such as the IHIF conference as well as specific Hospitality Channel shoots.

Briefing: Ctrip and OTAs globally

In January Ctrip invested US$180m in MakeMyTrip Limited, India’s largest online travel company and also entered the UK market by buying a majority stake in Travelfusion, a UK-based meta-search website.

The words OTA and disruption have almost become synonymous in the hospitality industry. Ctrip is a major OTA in China and is now making an impact across the globe. Ctrip’s pricing methods are also relevant to rate parity discussions across the industry.

In these videos experts discuss Ctrip and the OTAs’ disruptive potential across the globe.

Constant deals and consolidation in the OTA market means that the powerful are getting more powerful, and as discussed above rate parity is not yet an issue the industry has put to bed.

Ctrip was launched in 1999. It’s net revenue for 2015 was US$1.7 bn. Accommodation reservation revenues increased 44% year-on-year, reaching US$713 m, and transportation ticketing revenues increased 51% year-on-year, reaching US$688m.

Ctrip’s agreement with MakemyTrip means that it “may beneficially own up to 26.6% of MakeMyTrip’s outstanding shares. Upon completion of the investment, Ctrip will acquire the right to appoint a director to the MakeMyTrip board of directors.”

Ctrip claim that its relationship with Travel fusion will “enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of [Ctrip’s] IT system by leveraging Travelfusion’s advanced technology” as well as “further extending [Ctrip’s] leadership in China’s international travel market”

Last Year Ctrip also acquired a stake costing $400m in eLong, its rival OTA in China.

If you’ve been sent to this page and you’re not yet on the circulation list to receive these regular briefings and you would like to sign up, you can do see here. It’s free.

Video clips produced by ybc.tv for the Hospitality Channel, including interview from industry conferences such as the IHIF conference as well as specific Hospitality Channel shoots.

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