Deadly fire in New Delhi: A fire at the fully occupied Arpit Palace hotel in central New Delhi on Tuesday morning killed at least 17 people, according to local officials. The cause of the blaze at the 5-story, 65-room hotel remained uncertain.
CEO for growing Cycas: Cycas Hospitality, Amsterdam, has appointed Matt Luscombe as the company’s first CEO since it was founded in 2008 and will join the group in March. Luscombe joins from Australian retailer Coles Group after having spent 10 years with IHG, where he most recently served as chief commercial officer for Europe. The appointment follows significant expansion for Cycas, having added three new brands in 2018 and doubled its portfolio in the process. In the last year Cycas has expanded into Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands, and last autumn announced six new senior hires to support its ambitious European growth plans to have 10,000 rooms across Europe by 2022.
Jackson resort flips: KDG Capital, a Florida-based real estate private equity firm, has purchased the 230-room Snow King Resort Hotel in Jackson, Wyoming. BENCHMARK will continue to operate and market the 230-room property, located at the foot of Snow King Mountain in the Grand Teton mountains. KDG plans to invest US$5 million in capital improvements.
Troubling supply news: Lodging Econometrics (LE) reported that in 2018 new supply growth in the U.S. was 2%, the first time it has reached 2% in eight years. The top 25 markets had new supply growth of 2.7% while the remainder of the country showed growth at 1.7%. Last year, 12 of the top 25 markets had supply growth in excess of demand growth and LE said it expects the number of markets with supply growth exceeding demand growth to increase and the variances to widen. In the fourth quarter of 2018, the top six markets with the largest hotel construction pipelines were New York City, Dallas, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta and Nashville.