The Rezidor Hotel Group has announced the opening of five hotels (totaling 1,300 rooms) and signing of 10 hotels (totaling 2,300 rooms) in the second quarter of 2012, which is ahead of last year’s quarterly results.
The Q2 new openings include two flagship resorts in Corsica and Gran Canaria, adding to the group’s resort portfolio which now has almost 50 properties and 13,000 rooms across Europe, the Middle East & Africa. Puneet Chhatwal, Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer of The Rezidor Hotel Group, also announced the signing of two new-build hotels in East London with a total of 380 rooms. "London is a strategically important, mega-market for Rezidor," he said. "We aim to further grow in-depth of this market through our mid-market hotel brand, Park Inn by Radisson. Rezidor aims to have more than 10 Park Inn hotels in the Greater London area in the next three to four years."
The group’s prime growth focus, however, remains on the emerging markets. "We want to go deeper in the fast developing business hubs of Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and South Africa," explains Chhatwal. "Hotels in these markets will, most likely, be new-built—so we will see less conversions going forward. However, there is a huge potential of taking over partially unfinished hotel projects in mature markets: this year alone, we signed Park Inn by Radisson Odintsovo in Moscow, a Radisson Blu Hotel in Kyiv Podil and a Park Inn in Glasgow City Centre, which are all scheduled to open within this year, signaling the big potential take-over of available hybrids of conversions and new constructions," said Chhatwal.
Second quarter saw the opening of the following hotels, all under management and franchise contracts, the fifth consecutive quarter without any leased hotel opening which lays the foundation of profitable growth:
Radisson Blu Hotel, Uppsala, Sweden
Park Inn by Radisson Donetsk, Ukraine
Radisson Blu Resort, Gran Canaria, Spain
Radisson Blu Resort & Spa, Ajaccio Bay, Corsica, France
Radisson Blu Hotel, Doha, Qatar
In line with the group’s Route 2015 strategy to uplift the EBITDA margin by 6-8 percentage points by 2015, Rezidor has converted a committed contract in Rome to a Franchise contract, securing more profitable income streams in the years ahead and reducing its risk exposure. The group also extended a favorable lease in the Nordics, the Radisson Blu Hotel in Trondheim.
By the end of June 2012, Rezidor operated 332 hotels and 72,900 rooms in 54 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The group’s portfolio features additional 100 hotels and 22,000 rooms in the pipeline.