No other corner of the commercial real estate industry has been victim to as many converging trends as the hotel sector: Corporations are cutting back on business trips, families are still avoiding airline travel and virtually everyone has less...
As 2002 limps across the finish line, the men and women who run the commercial real estate industry are looking to the Middle East for hints of what 2003 will bring. Industry execs agree on two points: The U.S. is all but certain to wage war...
Can it be that the future of the Westin and Sheraton brands is in places like Normal, Ill.? It might sound unlikely, but Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (NYSE:HOT) considers markets like Normal — population 45,386 — ideal for growing the...
The priorities of property managers changed abruptly after Sept. 11, 2001. The destruction of the World Trade Center towers forced management firms to address security and safety issues with a new sense of urgency. Now, some property managers are...
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. has unveiled a strategy to expand its upscale Westin and Sheraton brands into secondary and tertiary markets with newly designed prototypes. The hotels will be smaller than the company’s core Sheraton...
New York-based UBS Warburg predicts that San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are the markets that will experience the biggest increases in convention business in 2003 — an increase of 30% to 40%. Hilton Hotels Corp. and Host Marriott...
Hilton Group PLC has sold a 60% interest in 10 hotels in the United Kingdom to the Rotch Group and the Farnsworth Group, both based in London, for $520 million. The 10-property portfolio includes 2,042 guestrooms...
Chicago real estate executive Paul Beitler contends many of the security measures implemented in high-rise office buildings nationwide in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center are ineffective, costly and onerous. The...
THE BIGGEST HOTEL SALE so far this year — Host Marriott Corp.'s $214 million purchase of the Boston Marriott Copley Place in June — shows how the negotiating advantage can shift to a buyer when an unsteady market is pushed over the edge. During a...