One thumbs up for Six Senses deal. The owners of the Six Senses Fiji, Sequitur Hotels, and its Managing Director Gordon Fell told HOTELS late last week they are confident the acquisition of the brand by IHG will end up strengthening the property. “IHG is a world-class operator of hotels and a natural long-term owner of a brand like Six Senses,” Fell said. “We really see it as the best of both worlds. Six Senses will benefit from IHG’s operating systems and marketing reach, but the guest experience will be as good as ever. We believe that Six Senses Fiji, along with the other Six Senses resorts, will enjoy faster revenue growth from exposure to new markets and this should drive superior financial performance.”
What’s in a name? CWT has been unveiled as the new official name of Carlson Wagonlit Travel, the global travel management company.
Cancun violence. At least five people were killed and another five were wounded Saturday after four gunmen opened fire inside a club on a main avenue in central Cancun about 4 miles away from the seaside tourist hotel zone, Quintana Roo state, prosecutors said. Cancun has seen an uptick in violence with federal authorities reporting 774 people killed in the state last year, compared to the recorded 359 killings in 2017. The violence may be due to reports of the Jalisco New Generation cartel moving into the Caribbean resort city and fighting other local gangs to gain control of the area.
Hot-lanta. Atlanta hotel performance growth exceeded projections during Super Bowl LIII weekend, but ranked below the average of the previous eight host markets, according to an analysis by STR’s Consulting & Analytics office. During the nights of Friday, 1 February, through Sunday, 3 February, the Atlanta market posted 387.2% growth RevPAR, which was driven predominantly by a 246.5% increase in ADR. Occupancy in the market rose 40.4%. RevPAR growth came in a bit higher than STR’s forecast of 350%, but the impact was still a bit lower than previous Super Bowl hosts because of Atlanta’s significant market size.
Breach update. Marriott International confirmed to TechCrunch that it has put in place “a mechanism to enable guests to look up individual passport numbers to see if they were included in the set of unencrypted passport numbers.” That follows a statement last month from the company confirming that five million unencrypted passport numbers were stolen in the data breach last year. The checker will ask for some personal information, like name, email address, as well as the last six-digits of the guest’s passport number. Marriott says data on “fewer than 383 million unique guests” was stolen in the data breach, revealed in September.