Loews at convention center: Loews Hotels & Co. is a joint equity partner in an agreement with KC Hotel Developers LLC to develop a hotel at the new Kansas City Convention Center. The hotel will open in early 2020. The Missouri hotel will have 800 rooms and 60,000 square feet of meeting and event space connected to the convention center.
Affinia Dumont NYC: Maryland-based Pebblebrook Hotel Trust sold the Affinia Dumont NYC Hotel for US$118 million. The 252-room hotel on East 34th Street. According to The Real Deal, the buyer is New York-based LeFrak Organization, which reportedly wants to turn the hotel into rental apartments.
Read more at Real Estate Weekly
Ligula Hospitality: Gothenburg, Sweden-based Ligula Hospitality Group AB, which operates 30 hotels, entered a lease agreement with two Balder-owned acquisitions: Ligula will operate the Copenhagen Plaza and Richmond hotels immediately and begin operating the other two – the Mercur and Star hotels – starting in July. That’s a total of 475 rooms, all in Copenhagen.
Waterparks: Twenty-seven U.S. hotel waterparks are scheduled to open by year-end 2017, according to research by Jeff Coy, president of JLC Hospitality Consulting in Arizona. That’s compared to 26 that opened in 2016 and only 14 that opened in 2015, and a record 40 in 2007. Coy says the hotel waterpark resort industry in the U.S. has shown sustained growth over the last decade, with growth rates between 5.8% and 10.1% annually since 2010.
Holiday Inn Express: A subsidiary of Singapore investment firm Hiap Hoe, bought the Holiday Inn Express, Trafford City, near Manchester, U.K., from a joint venture between Topland, Marick Capital and Mill Lane Estates. The 220-room hotel, which opened in May, is for the time being operated by Tower Management Limited.
Read more in the Manchester Evening News
Driftwood Acquisitions: Miami-based investment firm Driftwood Acquisitions & Development acquired the Doubletree by Hilton Historic District in St. Augustine and the 91-room Hampton Inn Daytona Beach/Beachfront, both in Florida. Purchase prices were not named. Both properties will be managed by Driftwood. Driftwood declined to provide the seller or the purchase prices.
Food poisoning? Skyrocketing claims of food poisoning by British tourists in Europe are prompting hoteliers to consider barring them from resorts. Vacation companies are saying that the surge in legal action is mostly coming from claims management companies that represent customers of all-inclusive resorts. TUI recorded 15 times more sickness claims since spring 2016 than in previous years.