Zomato report says 10% restaurants have closed down, 30% more could shut due to Covid impact

New Delhi: Nearly 10 percent dine-out restaurants across the country have shut down while 30 percent more restaurants currently not operating due to COVID are not likely to reopen even after the pandemic ends, a new report by leading food delivery company Zomato said.

According to the report released Wednesday, these restaurants are among the 83 percent dine-outs that are currently non-operational. The remaining 43 percent of restaurants that are shut are likely to open as the situation improves.

“Out of the 83 percent restaurants that are not open for business, 10 percent of restaurants have already shut down permanently… an additional 30 percent restaurants might not reopen at all. The remaining 43 percent, which are closed right now, is likely to open as the situation becomes better,” said the report.

The rest of the dining industry is operating at just 8 to 10 percent of the gross merchandise value (GMV) from earlier levels pre-pandemic levels, it said.

“Nearly 60 percent restaurateurs said they estimate to retain less than half of their original business volumes for a few months even post-COVID,” the report said.

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Spinneys reveals 24 winners of F&B incubator programme

ocally-owned supermarket Spinneys announced the winners of its incubator programme for micro food and beverage suppliers in the UAE, which launched in May 2020.

Participation in the programme surpassed Spinneys’ expectations with more than 160 local businesses entering submissions. In response, the grocer has increased the number of winners, with 22 brands to be fast-tracked onto Spinneys’ shelves, and another two companies accepted into its product development programme.

The initiative has also been recognised by the UAE government’s Food and Water Security Office for its contribution to the country’s National Food Security Strategy.

Her Excellency Mariam Almheiri, Minister of State for Food and Water Security, says: “A leading objective for the UAE Food and Water Security Office is to support local food production, which includes helping innovative start-ups to enhance domestic agriculture and re-imagine the UAE’s food sustainability landscape. This aligns with the objectives of the National Food Security Strategy and the directives of our wise leadership, which recognises the importance of local tech-enabled production to strengthen the UAE’s food security.”

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Downtown Waterfront Hotel Announced for Panama City, Florida

The St. Joe Company (NYSE: JOE) and the City of Panama City, Florida execute a long-term land lease to bring a new hotel and restaurant to Panama City’s downtown waterfront district. Under the terms of the lease St. Joe will lease a City-owned parcel to develop, construct and operate a waterfront hotel and standalone restaurant on a portion of the Panama City Marina property fronting beautiful St. Andrews Bay, which has a deep water channel to the Gulf of Mexico.

This agreement comes after nearly two years of planning, discussions and public meetings between St. Joe, the City and local residents. St. Joe initially expressed interest in the project in September of 2018 in a letter to the City and reaffirmed that interest in November of that year after Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm, caused significant damage to the City’s downtown district. In the time since, St. Joe has held four public events to gather feedback and share conceptual plans with local residents. “We believe that a vibrant downtown with a mix of residents, shoppers, businesses and visitors benefits the community as a whole,” said Jorge Gonzalez, President and CEO for St. Joe. “We are making this investment in downtown Panama City with the anticipation that it can be a catalyst for other investments that over time, will make downtown Panama City a vibrant destination to live, work and visit."

The hotel and restaurant represent the first step towards implementing the award-winning Strategic Vision for Historic Downtown created by renowned design firm Dover Kohl & Partners. The vision was adopted in 2019 following a community-led effort that included workshops, focus groups, town hall meetings and design charrettes. The vision documents can be seen at www.rebuildpc.org.

The leased property and most of the downtown Panama City area are in a Qualified Opportunity Zone (QOZ), federal capital gains tax incentive program that was created in 2017 to encourage private investment in order to spur economic development and job creation. St. Joe created a QOZ fund for the downtown Panama City area.

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Cruise trips are back. This is what they look like now

Boarding in the Italian port of Genoa for a seven-day Mediterranean cruise on August 16, travel agent Valeria Belardi prepared herself for a voyage like no other.

Belardi was one of some 3,000 pioneering cruisers onboard MSC Grandiosa, the first cruise liner to return to the Mediterranean following the global shut down of the multi-billion-dollar cruise industry in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The voyage was characterized by COVID testing, social distancing, hand sanitizing and temperature checks, but it was, Belardi told CNN, also relaxing and enjoyable. More importantly, it was, reportedly, virus-free.

MSC Cruises wouldn't confirm exact numbers, but the Grandiosa was operating at about 60% of its 6,300 passenger capacity.

There were day trips, including sightseeing in the Maltese capital Valletta and the Sicilian city of Palermo. While onboard, Belardi enjoyed pre-packaged snacks on the deck, relaxing evenings by the pool, and a trip to the spa.

"I think cruises could be the safest holiday, right now," said Belardi, who owns travel company Vivere & Viaggiare Roma Pittaluga.

But MSC Grandiosa is almost alone in its return to the high seas.

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Year-Over-Year the Global Hotel Construction Pipeline Continues to Increase

The latest Global Hotel Construction Pipeline Trend Report from Lodging Econometrics (LE) states that the global hotel construction pipeline stands at 14,779 projects/2,412,736 rooms. Year-over-year (YOY) the pipeline increased 5% by projects and 4% by rooms with several stages of the pipeline hitting their peaks by project and rooms counts.

Brands leading in the pipeline for each of these companies are Marriott’s Fairfield Inn with 431 projects/50,249 rooms; Hampton by Hilton with 775 projects/102,815 rooms; IHG’s Holiday Inn Express with 712 projects/90,479 rooms; and AccorHotel’s Ibis Brands with 319 projects/44,817 rooms.

Throughout the first half of 2020, the world opened 891 hotels accounting for 131,921 rooms

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Avani+ Ho Tram Resort under construction in Vietnam

Avani Hotels & Resorts has announced the signing of the first Avani+ upscale resort in Vietnam - Avani+ Ho Tram Resort. The property is scheduled to open in the third quarter of 2023.

Currently, the brand has a total of three properties under construction in Ho Chi Minh City, Doc Let and Cam Ranh, as well as two hotels in operation in Hai Phong and Quy Nhon

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Hotel JAL City Fukuoka Tenjin to Open in 2021

Okura Nikko Hotel Management Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Hotel Okura Co., Ltd., announced today that it will open Hotel JAL City Fukuoka Tenjin in 2021.

Sekisui House, Ltd., a renowned Japanese construction company, is now building the hotel and aiming to complete it by January 2021.

Based on Hotel JAL City's brand concept “smart simplicity”, the new hotel will offer a smart and simple stay experience, providing check-in and check-out and room key functionality by means of guests’ smartphone

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Ginger Hotels Announces The Signing Of Three New Hotels

Ginger Hotels announces the signing of three new hotels –two in Chennai and one in Patna –designed around the brand's lean luxe philosophy. The two Chennai properties will take the total number of Ginger hotels in the city to five, while the Patna property will be the brand's second hotel in the city.

Chennai and Patna are both high demand markets. With the addition of these hotels in different micro-markets, the Ginger brand deepens its market penetration in cities that are important commercial hubs of India

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Radisson Hotel Group Signs Pakistan’s First Internationally Branded Serviced Apartments

Radisson Hotel Group announced the signing of the Radisson Blu Serviced Apartments, Islamabad in Pakistan, the first internationally branded serviced apartments in the country

This marks the group's second hotel in Pakistan, accelerating its ambition to have 10 hotels and 2,000 rooms in operation and under development across the country by 2025.

The new-build hotel will form part of a mixed-use development, which includes offices and a retail mall

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Hotelogix, AxisRooms and RepUp Merge to Offer the Most Powerful, Full-stack Solution for Hotels

Hotelogix, a Cloud PMS company, AxisRooms, a distribution company and RepUp, a guest experience management company have announced their merger into Hotelogix PTE, headquartered in Singapore. This three-way merger marks the radical beginning of a new era of hospitality solutions that will now be re-imagined and delivered by this integrated platform which will cover operations, distribution, reputation, marketing automation, and guest-facing technologies.

The merger has given Hotelogix PTE an aggregate customer base spanning 100+ countries, powering 10000+ hospitality businesses ranging from hotels, resorts, boutique hotels, hostels to aparthotels, campsites, villas, vacation rentals, independents, and chains. With 200+ employees, the new entity has emerged as one of the largest SaaS providers for the hospitality sector in the APAC market and aims at aggregating 20K+ customers in the next 3 years.

Hotels today use multiple systems through a guest's lifecycle, from pre-booking to post-checkout stages, which then require integration of various systems leading to high costs, broken experience, delayed implementation, and fragmented support. Worst still, it leaves guests with sub-optimal stay experience. The core objective of the merger is to harness the power of data across operations, distribution, and customer experience systems to deliver exceptional value and seamless experience to its clients' customers.

Aditya Sanghi who will continue to be the CEO at Hotelogix said, "With this merger, we will have a wide range of solutions to offer which will give superior value to our customers and increase our share of wallet. This definitely gives us a huge competitive edge against our competitors at a global level.

Prabhash Bhatnagar, founder of Hotelogix adds, “Our decade-plus experience has given us a presence in more than 100 countries. The merger will add to our arsenal of offerings, and will help fuel our growth in many of these geographies quickly.”

Anil Kumar Prasanna, CEO at AxisRooms said, "The future of hotel technology needs to be open and accessible to every hotel partner or technology provider. If hotels want the full range of services or just a part of the stack, we want the technology to integrate as seamlessly as possible and be available to all partners with this merger."Ravi Taneja, co-founder of AxisRooms adds, "We have worked closely with Hotelogix and RepUp for a few years; customer-centricity has been our common focus, together we will enhance this joint vision to greater heights and create legendary customer experiences."

Pranjal Prashar, current CEO at RepUp said, "We are very excited to partner with two of the finest companies in the hospitality technology ecosystem with whom we have always had significant working synergies. With our customer-centric and in-depth machine learning approach, coupled with other individual technological prowesses of the merging entities, we will continue to deliver solutions of high relevance for our customers."

Accel Partners, Vertex Ventures, Saama Capital and Seedfund amongst others are existing investors of the companies and are backing this merger. Jagadeesan Kumar (JK), Managing Partner at JV Advisors LLP acted as the exclusive financial advisor for the three companies.

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Accor signs 14 hotels across Northern Europe in first half of 2020

Accor signed a total of 14 properties across Northern Europe in the first half of this year, including four hotels in the UK and Ireland.

A new Ibis Budget hotel is set to open in Glasgow in 2022, next to the group’s forthcoming Tribe property, and Business Traveller has previously reported on the following UK and Ireland signings this year:

Accor’s Tribe brand to open Manchester airport property

Accor to open Ireland’s first Fairmont with the refurb of Carton House

Accor adds Sheffield and Bournemouth properties

In mainland Europe, a total of ten properties were signed in Benelux – six in Belgium and four in the Netherlands.

A new Novotel Living property is set to open at Brussels airport, alongside an Ibis Styles hotel, and other signings in Belgium include a Mercure property in Hans-Sur-Lesse, an Ibis Styles hotel in Bredene, an Ibis in Geel, and an Adagio Access in Brussels.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, there were signings for Accor’s Tribe and Mercure brands in Amsterdam North, as well as forthcoming Ibis Styles and Mercure properties at Rotterdam airport.

Commenting on the news Phillip Lassman, vice president of development, Accor Northern Europe said:

“The first half of the year has posed a unique set of challenges for Accor and the hospitality industry as a whole. However, the strength of our proposition remains and through the dedication of the Accor team and hard work of our partners we have delivered an outstanding set of development results, with 14 new signings collectively adding over 2,000 rooms to our network in the past six months.

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Christian Wiendieck Appointed General Manager At Kempinski Hotel Jinan, China

The soon-to-be-opened new top luxury hotel in Shandong province, Kempinski Hotel Jinan, is now headed by General Manager Christian Wiendieck, who has just been appointed to his new position. A seasoned hotelier, he can look back on an outstanding career of more than 20 years within the Kempinski brand, joining the Jinan pre-opening team from his last assignment as general manager at Kempinski Hotel Fuzhou.

A native German, Christian Wiendieck started his Kempinski journey in 1997 in the Food and Beverage Department at Kempinski Hotel Bristol Berlin and continued as Food and Beverage Director at Kempinski Hotel Munich Airport. After three years at Grand Hotel des Bains Kempinski St. Moritz, he was promoted to his first general manager position at Kempinski Hotel Adriatic in Croatia, followed by stints in Italy and the United Arab Emirates.

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IHG Loses 103 Hotels to Sonesta

Service Properties Trust (Nasdaq: SVC) today announced that it will transfer the branding and management of 103 hotels to Sonesta International Hotels Corporation, or Sonesta, from InterContinental Hotels Group plc (NYSE: IHG), or IHG. As previously announced, SVC sent notices of termination to IHG for failure to pay SVC’s minimum returns and rents due for July and August 2020 totaling $26.4 million, plus accrued interest, and IHG had until August 24, 2020 to avoid termination by making payment to SVC. SVC did not receive any payment from IHG by August 24, 2020, nor does SVC expect to receive any payments from IHG in the future, and the management agreements with IHG will be terminated. The effective date of the termination is November 30, 2020, which is the same date that SVC currently plans to transfer the branding and management of these hotels to Sonesta.

SVC’s management agreements with IHG cover 103 hotels (three InterContinental®, five Kimpton® Hotels & Restaurants, 11 Crowne Plaza®, three Holiday Inn®, 20 Staybridge Suites® and 61 Candlewood Suites®) in 30 states in the U.S., the District of Columbia, Ontario, Canada and Puerto Rico. Upon transfer to Sonesta, SVC expects that these hotels will be operated under the Royal Sonesta, Sonesta and Sonesta ES Suites brands. There are currently 80 Sonesta branded hotels worldwide.

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Radisson Hotel Miami Beach Announced

Radisson Hotel Group today announced the signing of Radisson Hotel Miami Beach. The hotel will offer 216 guest rooms and suites. With its exceptional oceanfront location, guests will have endless opportunities to relax in the outdoor pool or walk around the beautiful butterfly garden. Those looking for more entertainment can visit the sundeck, which will host special events and poolside barbeques. Prior to opening its doors in Q4 of this year, the property is undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation to further enhance the guest experience with state-of-the-art amenities and services.

“This hotel is a phenomenal addition to our Radisson portfolio, serving as a top destination with stunning oceanfront views and fantastic amenities for every type of traveler,” said Phil Hugh, chief development officer, Americas, Radisson Hotel Group. “We are excited to see our growth in Miami with this hotel opening just a few months before the opening of the newly constructed Radisson RED Miami Airport. Our development team is working diligently to expand our footprint in more key gateway markets, with beautiful hotels like Radisson Hotel Miami Beach.”

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Thai hospitality firm Dusit International announces re-entry into India

Thailand-based hospitality firm Dusit International has announced its return to India with a plan to open at least two Dusit-branded hotels per year 2021 onward in tier I and tier II cities.

The company will focus on markets such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru – as well as key leisure destinations such as Goa.

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Ginger Announces The Signing Of Three New Hotels

MUMBAI, AUGUST 25, 2020: Ginger Hotels announces the signing of three new hotels –two in Chennai and one in Patna –designed around the brand’s lean luxe philosophy of offering a vibrant, contemporary and seamless hospitality experience to its guests. The two Chennai properties will take the total number of Ginger hotels in the city to five, while the Patna property will be the brand’s second hotel in the city.

Commenting on the signings, Ms. Deepika Rao, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, Ginger Hotels said, “Ginger Hotels recorded unprecedented growth in FY 2019-2020 with the addition of 1,250 rooms to its portfolio across India – the highest any single brand in the country has signed in the year. These three new signings carry this momentum further.”

The 99-room Ginger located in Sirusari, Chennai is a management contract with M/s KVSN Properties Pvt. Ltd. Ginger Pallavaram, Chennai, which will feature 108 rooms, is a management contract with Ravin Hotels Pvt. Ltd.

Ginger Bailey Road, Patna with 95 rooms, is strategically located, connecting Danapur and Patna city. This hotel will be a fully fitted lease agreement with PSVS Enterprises LLP.

As state capitals, Chennai and Patna are both high demand markets. With the addition of these hotels in different micro-markets, the Ginger brand deepens its market penetration in cities that are important commercial hubs of India.

U.S. Hotel P&L Turned Positive In July

BROOMFIELD, Colorado - U.S. hotel gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR) reached positive territory for the first time since February, according to STR's latest monthly P&L data release.

In a year-over-year comparison with July 2019, the industry reported the following:

GOPPAR: -93.3% to US$5.74

TRevPAR: -74.1% to US$60.04

EBITDA PAR: -115.1% to US$-9.24

LPAR (Labor Costs): -64.8% to US$28.46

The industry had registered negative GOPPAR values for four consecutive months: March (US$-2.10), April (US-$17.98), May (US$-10.26) and June (US$-5.89).

The industry had registered negative GOPPAR values for four consecutive months: March (US$-2.10), April (US-$17.98), May (US$-10.26) and June (US$-5.89).

"As the industry inched closer to 50% occupancy, we saw continued incremental improvement in the subsequent profitability metrics," said Raquel Ortiz, STR's assistant director of financial performance. "We are of course nowhere near pre-pandemic levels, but there were additional encouraging signs in positive GOPPAR for full-service hotels and six major markets."

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Atlantis, The Palm to showcase the world's largest canvas

Five-star Dubai resort Atlantis, The Palm will showcase the world’s largest art canvas in November this year. Created by famous artist Sacha Jafri, the canvas is hoped to raise in excess of AED110 million (US$30 million) for charity.

Dubbed as the ‘Modern-day Sistine Chapel’, the canvas covers the Atlantis ballroom floor, coming in at just under 2,000 sqm or around the size of two football pitches. Jafri has spent 24 weeks on the painting, with plans to finish the piece on September 10.

With the support of The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), together with The Global Gift Foundation, Atlantis, The Palm, Dubai Cares, and the UAE Government, the canvas is the flagship piece in the artist’s ‘Humanity Inspired’ charity drive.

Money raised from the sale of the artwork will go towards installing internet connectivity in some of the world’s poorest regions, enabling those in need to learn about medicine, healthcare, vaccines and sanitation.

Sandpiper Lodging Trust Has Acquired Two Candle wood Suites Hotels Located in South Carolina

Sandpiper Lodging Trust announced the acquisition of two Candlewood Suites Hotels located in North Charleston and Bluffton, South Carolina from DC Hospitality. Both properties are mid-scale extended stay hotels located in two dynamic hospitality markets. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Carter Rise, CEO of SLT, stated, “We are extremely excited to add these two hotels to the Sandpiper Lodging Trust portfolio. We have targeted the Charleston and coastal South Carolina market as an area with exciting long-term demographic advantages, and we are pleased to be able to acquire two quality assets in these markets.”

“Adding the Candlewoods Suites flag to our portfolio is consistent with our strategy to focus on mid-scale and upper-end economy extended stay assets as we grow SLT. Our core extended-stay portfolio has weathered the pandemic reasonably well, and we are grateful to our lenders and equity partners for their confidence in us as we continue to grow our footprint. We expect to continue to opportunistically grow our portfolio over the balance of the year and into 2021.”

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