Hotels Industry Round-Up 2009

It comes as no surprise that the hotel industry has had a tough year.  The global recession has devastated business travel, while hotels have been forced to slash rates and run innovative marketing campaigns in order to keep leisure demand ticking over. Elsewhere, hotels, their guests and employees have been targeted by terrorists, while the H1N1 swine flu virus cast another shadow over the global demand for travel.

However, the hotel sector is nothing if not resilient. It has learnt to cope with economic crises, security issues and the threat of disease. Continuing to provide a service for travellers during the hard times will reap rewards when things improve. Expansion and investment must carry on as well.

This year's World Travel Market will feature many of the world's leading hotels groups, some of which were at the forefront of the past year's difficulties. But like most travel businesses, they are looking to the future.

• Oberoi Hotels & Resorts is continuing with its expansion plans and has a dozen new projects either under way or in the pipeline, including a total rebuild of the Mumbai property, which will reopen in 2010.

• Taj Hotels Palaces & Resorts is owned by the multinational conglomerate Tata Group and also has its eyes on international expansion having recently completed the $100m renovation of its Mumbai property.

• Best Western, already the world's largest by room number, continues to sign up more hotels. In September, it entered the important leisure destination of Egypt with the 151-room Best Western Solitaire resort in Marsa Alam.

• Wyndham Hotels + Resorts is another giant of the industry which is still finding new markets for its portfolio of brands. When the 140-room Ramada Chisinau City Centre opens this time next year, it will Moldova's first internationally branded property.
  
• Rotana currently manages around 70 properties in the Middle East and North Africa. It has ambitious expansion plans, with at least 27 hotels under construction. While many of them are planned for the UAE and Middle East, other destination will benefit from its Arabian hospitality. Properties in Syria, Kurdistan and Lebanon will open their doors in 2010 while the Baghdad Rotana in Iraq, located in the International Green Zone, is set to open in 2012.

• Rezidor describes itself as one of the fastest growing hotel companies in the world. Its Radisson Blu brand is already the second largest in Europe with 125 hotels, while Park Inn has 120 properties only six years after launching.  During the first half of this year it added 3,100 rooms to its operations across its portfolio and boosted its pipeline by 25 hotels. It is keener than most on expanding in Africa, where it sees an opening for new-breed international branded hotels.

World Travel Market Chairman Fiona Jeffery said: "The travel and tourism industry is one of the most resilient in the world. The hotels sector is arguably the most resilient part of the travel industry.

During the current difficult trading environment caused by the global financial downturn airlines and tour operators have cut their capacity. However, hotels still have the same number of rooms to fill so have to think of innovative marketing campaigns to maintain healthy RevPAR levels.

Furthermore, a significant number of hotels, may of them exhibiting at WTM this year, are actively expanding their portfolios and moving into new markets. This investment is sure to pay off when the economy returns to growth."

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