Atlas in the news
‘Tsunami’ of hotel closures is coming, experts warn
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-09-19/hotels-out-of-business-covid-pandemic By HUGO MARTÍNSTAFF WRITER SEP. 19, 2020 5:05 AM Located on one of the world’s most expensive strips of commercial real estate, the upscale Luxe Rodeo Drive hotel has closed, a casualty of a pandemic that is likely to put more hotels out of business. The 86-room hotel, which for 27 years shared a city block with such high-end outlets as Cartier and Harry Winston, notified its workers last week that it would permanently cease operations because of the financial effects of the COVID-19 crisis. “Please accept my sincerest gratitude for your service and loyalty and know that this decision was not made lightly,” Efrem Harkham, the chief executive of Luxe Hotels, which owns or operates three other hotels in Los Angeles and New York, told workers in a letter. The Luxe Rodeo Drive is the first high-end hotel in the Los Angeles area to go out of business because of the pandemic, and industry experts point to an unusually high loan delinquency rate among hotel borrowers as a sign that more closures are likely to follow. “We know there is a tsunami outside. We know it’s going to hit the beach. We just don’t know when,” said Donald Wise,…
Mayors Near Disneyland, Among the Longest Closed US Tourist Hubs, Seek Reopening Rules
https://product.costar.com/home/news/2081137948 Lingering Theme Park Closings Add to Real Estate Fallout in California’s Orange County By Lou Hirsh CoStar News September 17, 2020 | 6:16 P.M. A coalition of Orange County mayors is calling on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to set reopening guidelines for Disneyland Resort and other area theme parks in one of the largest U.S. tourist hubs where main attractions have been closed since the pandemic’s start, disrupting the retail, tourism and real estate industries. The mayors are banding together to demand reopening permission and protocols for the the parks including Anahiem’s Disneyland, the nation’s second-most visited theme park. They seek guidelines similar to those that have allowed major attractions in Florida to reopen with reduced capacities and hygiene-related restrictions, including Walt Disney World in Orlando. “It’s a disaster right here,” said Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu at a news conference, which also included the mayors of neighboring Garden Grove and Buena Park, which is home to the Knott’s Berry Farm theme park. “How long are you going to keep us closed?” Newsom said this week he plans to “soon” issue the long-awaited guidelines for opening the California theme parks that have been closed for about six months. However, he did not provide a timeline…
San Diego hotel sales come to near standstill since COVID-19
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2020-09-17/california-san-diego-hotel-sales-plummet-since-covid-19 Some experts are predicting that 2020 will go down as the worst year on record for the hotel real estate market By LORI WEISBERG SEP. 17, 2020 6 AM The dollar volume of San Diego County hotel sales plummeted by 70 percent during the first half of this year, yet another indicator of an industry facing huge financial challenges amid a pandemic that has already forced some properties to default on their loans. In a recently released report by Atlas Hospitality Group, a Southern California brokerage firm specializing in the lodging industry, counties up and down the state saw a major slowdown in lodging properties changing hands, with the dollar volume of sales statewide down by more than 53 percent during the first six months of this year. Even more telling are the numbers documenting the abrupt slowdown in transactions since the mid-March shutdown order from Gov. Gavin Newsom. Between April and June, there was just one hotel in San Diego County that changed hands, compared with five a year earlier, which translated to a 97 percent plunge in the dollar volume of the sales, Atlas reported. Statewide, the dollar volume of hotel sales during that same period fell 82…
Lake Forest Drives 2020 Hotel Openings
MANY OTHERS IN WORKS COULD BE NIXED https://www.ocbj.com/news/2020/sep/07/lake-forest-drives-2020-hotel-openings/ By Katie Murar Monday, September 7, 2020 Orange County saw new hotel openings nearly double in the first half of the year, thanks to a trio of Lake Forest properties catering to business and leisure travelers, according to a report by Irvine-based hotel consultancy and brokerage Atlas Hospitality Group. Four Orange County hotels with 484 rooms opened in the first half of 2020, marking a notable jump from the same time last year, when two hotels totaling 280 rooms opened. All four opened prior to the coronavirus halting the area’s tourism industry in its tracks. The largest property to open in Orange County in the first six months of the year was the 168-room Staybridge Inn & Suites Irvine, along Barranca Parkway, a few miles from John Wayne Airport. The other three hotels opened in Lake Forest, adding 316 rooms to the city. They include: • Homewood Suites Lake Forest, with 116 rooms • TownePlace Suites Lake Forest, with 112 rooms • Hampton Inn Lake Forest, with 88 rooms In Los Angeles, traditionally a driver of hotel development for the state, only one property opened in the first half of 2020: the 24-room…
California sees historic drops in hotel sales
In the second quarter of 2020, California hotel transactions volume dropped 82% year over year, according to Atlas Hospitality Group. https://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/304355/California-sees-historic-drops-in-hotel-sales 10 SEPTEMBER 2020 9:22 AM By Sean McCracken and Bryan Wroten REPORT FROM THE U.S.—The California hotel industry has seen drops in overall transactions volume that are slightly worse than even the depths of the Great Recession, according to a study from Atlas Hospitality Group. Through the first half of 2020, sales volume fell 53% year over year, with the number of individual sales down 21% and median price per room down 13%. Alan Reay, president of Atlas, said those numbers don’t even fully reflect the depths of the crisis. “When I first looked, it was interesting because I expected the numbers to be down even more,” he said. The declines are even more steep just in the second quarter, with sales volume down 82%, individual sales down 45% and median price per room down 22%, with Reay noting the price-per-room figure was more resilient because it was based in large part on deals set before the pandemic hit. The sales volume in comparable to what was seen during the worst portions of the Great Recession, with an 81% drop recorded in…
L.A. Confidential
How a group of Chinese developers found their way to City Councilman José Huizar, made over L.A.’s downtown, and caused the city’s biggest corruption scandal in decades. BY DAVID BARBOZA — SEPTEMBER 6, 2020 It all began in February 2013, at a dinner in Los Angeles organized by Raymond Chan, an official in charge of the city’s building and safety inspection agency. Attending that evening was City Councilman José Huizar, who at age 44 was a rising star in the Democratic Party, and perhaps the future mayor of Los Angeles. A graduate of Berkeley and Princeton, Huizar had championed the redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles, and he chaired the city’s powerful PLUM committee, which gave him oversight of land and property developments. They were joined that evening by Huang Wei, a 54-year-old Chinese billionaire who was eager to build in downtown Los Angeles, which was part of Huizar’s district, the 14th. Although he resided in China, Huang made frequent trips to L.A., and had acquired two sizable pieces of property in the city in 2010 and 2011. On one plot, he planned to build a 77-story tower, which promised to be the country’s tallest building west of the Mississippi River….
Napa hotel revenue remains low due to COVID-19 impacts: Sales impacted statewide
https://napavalleyregister.com/business/napa-hotel-revenue-remains-low-due-to-covid-19-impacts-sales-impacted-statewide/article_863ae995-cb4e-5412-add2-08d83f3e8a1c.html Jennifer Huffman Sep 5, 2020 Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Napa County and California hotel revenue has dramatically declined, said hotel industry experts. “The tourism industry has a challenging year ahead,” said Michael Lennon, general manager of Calistoga Spa Hot Springs and the new board chair of Visit Napa Valley. From January to July 2020, the average Napa County hotel occupancy fell 45.8%, according to hotel data source STR. For January to July in 2019, occupancy was 71.5%. This year, it was 38.8%. From January to July 2020, the average Napa County hotel room rate was $266.03. In 2019 during those same months it was $318.05. That’s a 16.4% decline. Revenue for a Napa County hotel dropped 60.6% during the first seven months of 2020. One year ago the total revenue was $242.2 million. This year it is $95.5 million. According to a separate report from Atlas Hospitality Group in the first six months of 2020 the average California revenue per available room declined by 47%. From April 1 to June 30 it declined by 70%. “The Napa County tourism industry, like almost all parts of the world, has been significantly impacted by the health and safety measures…
Pandemic Causes Record Decline in California Hotel Property Sales
https://product.costar.com/home/news/shared/142961870?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personalized&utm_content=p4 Loan Distress for Some Owners Could Create Rare Bargains for Future Buyers By Lou Hirsh CoStar News September 3, 2020 | 6:25 P.M. California hotel property sales are on track to have their lowest year ever, following a record decline in sales as the coronavirus pandemic stalled tourism and real estate activity. The dollar volume of hotel sales in the state dropped by an unprecedented level of more than 80% year-over-year in the pandemic period of April to June, according to brokerage and research firm Atlas Hospitality Group, which primarily tracks California hotel property trends. “With a large number of hotels closed down and occupancies and room rates at record lows, no one has ever experienced a market like this before,” reads an Atlas report. The sales decline in the early months of the pandemic contributed to pushing total sales dollar volume for the first half of the year down more than 53% from a year earlier, according to Atlas. That’s the steepest decline Atlas has reported for the first six months of the year since 2009 when the number of sales fell 51% year-over-year and the dollar volume dropped 80.3% during the last economic recession. The financial challenges facing…
Atlas report paints grim picture for hotel industry
San Diego Daily Transcript Wednesday, September 2, 2020 By Thor Kamban Biberman The California hotel sales market has suffered the steepest decline in sales on record due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Atlas Hospitality Group, and it may not be getting better anytime soon. The number of San Diego County hotel transactions in the first half of this year was 10, one more than a year ago, but that doesn’t begin to tell the whole story. San Diego’s dollar sales volume in the first half of 2020 plummeted 69.8 percent year-over-year to $99.39 million, according to Atlas. In normal years, there are often single hotel sales that exceed the $100 million figure. From April 1-June 30, San Diego’s individual sales declined 80 percent year-over-year, total dollar volume of sales dropped 97 percent, and the most expensive transaction was the $27.3 million sale of the 183-room Kimpton Hotel Palomar, Atlas reported. There were just 577 rooms involved in San Diego County hotel sales in the first half of this year compared with 1,369 in 2019. That represented a 57.6 percent decline. The average price per room declined 29.2 percent year-over-year from $228,363 in the first half of last year to…
Pressures of pandemic slow California hotel pipeline
https://www.hotelnewsnow.com/articles/304224/Pressures-of-pandemic-slow-California-hotel-pipeline 01 SEPTEMBER 2020 8:04 AM Projects continue to enter and remain in California’s hotel construction pipeline, but the reality of the coronavirus pandemic is that many projects will never be completed. By Bryan Wroten bwroten@hotelnewsnow.com @HNN_Bryan REPORT FROM THE U.S.—California hotel development slowed over the first six months of 2020, but the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic on new hotel projects likely won’t be realized for years. The latest mid-year hotel development survey from Atlas Hospitality Group found a significant decrease in construction and openings during the first half of 2020 compared to the record-setting pace of the first part of 2019. The number of hotels under construction fell from 234 in the first half of 2019 to 194 this year, a 17.1% decrease. While the number of hotels opening so far was down by just one (35 compared to 36), the number of rooms opening was down by 22.5% (from 4,515 to 3,500). Conversely, new projects in planning grew by 9% compared to the first half of 2019, with new rooms in planning growing by 5.7%. However, those growth figures don’t tell a complete story. California still has a healthy pipeline of hotels opening in the second…
Covid-19 Is Taking a Toll on Plans for New Hotels
https://labusinessjournal.com/news/2020/aug/31/covid-19-taking-toll-plans-new-hotels/ By Hannah Madans Monday, August 31, 2020 Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on the hotel industry, and that pain has extended to the planning and construction of new hotels. So far this year in California, 35 hotels with a total of 3,500 new rooms have opened in the state, and 194 more hotels are under construction, according to a new Atlas Hospitality Group report. In Los Angeles, however, only one hotel opened in the first half of the year, the 24-room Prospect Hotel in Hollywood. Atlas Hospitality President Alan Reay said many more hotels have been completed but postponed their opening due to Covid-19. In all, the number of hotel rooms planned for California this year has increased 9%. L.A. has 49 hotels with 7,650 rooms under construction and leads the state in number of hotels and rooms in planning. However, the number of hotels under construction statewide decreased 17% from 2019. “On the development side, it’s such a long lag time that we are not really seeing the effects (of the pandemic) right now,” Reay said. But, he added, not all hotels that are planned or under construction will actually be finished, and if the buildings are completed,…
Napa Marriott to be sold for $100 million
https://napavalleyregister.com/business/napa-marriott-to-be-sold-for-100-million/article_6c585b9a-03f6-56d0-ad3a-0afd034bf8f1.html Jennifer Huffman Aug 28, 2020 The Marriott Napa Valley Hotel & Spa is soon to have a new owner. Xenia Hotels & Resorts, the current owner of the property, announced it has entered into an agreement to sell the 275-room Marriott for $100 million. The deal should close “before the end of the third quarter,” said a Xenia news release. “The transaction is not contingent upon financing and the buyer has a $5 million deposit at-risk.” A buyer was not named. Alan X. Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group in Irvine, said he thinks the sale is an example of how publicly-traded companies are now selling such properties to try and reduce their debt levels. Before COVID-19, “this hotel would have sold for around $147 million,” said Reay. The $100 million price — or a 32% discount, “is in line with other transactions we are seeing selling,” during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. Might other Napa hotels also change hands in the coming months? Probably not, said Reay. “Most owners are not looking to sell in this market as they do not want to take such a big hit to values, so we do not expect to see any…
