Communiqués de presse

Christie & Co, le cabinet conseil international en immobilier hôtelier, vient de publier une nouvelle analyse des investissements en hôtellerie en 2018. Celle-ci montre une nouvelle année record en investissement dans ce secteur en Espagne avec 4 860 millions d'Euros.

Following the report preview on January 24th at FITUR, the international tourism fair in Madrid, and in collaboration with the Asociación Empresarial Hotelera de Madrid, Christie & Co has now published the full report, in which it offers the global figure of hotel investment estimated in 2018 in Spain. and the report also provides the ‘Perspectives 2019-2020’, which predicts that Spain will continue to attract investment interest in a more volatile and competitive environment.

According to the data available to Christie & Co, the total hotel investment in Spain in 2018 was €4,860 million, in a total 223 transactions (surpassing the 185 transactions registered in 2017), which represents an average price per room of €128,000 and an increase of 24.6% of the total volume of investment versus 2017. This positions Spain in second place, behind the United Kingdom (where investment is estimated to be £6,500 million), but before Germany for the first time (where €4,000 million has been estimated for the total investment in 2018).

In terms of investor profile, the report highlights the importance of investment firms as the largest source of capital in 2018, representing 53% of the total investment, with more than €2,560 million (increasing its percentage versus 2017, in which they represented 42%). Hotel companies, with 24% of the total investment figures (vs. 20% in 2017) are in second place, and REIT companies are again in third position with 15% (vs. 16% in 2017). Furthermore, regarding origin, it is noted that investment from national origin has decreased in comparison to the previous year (35% in 2018 vs. 51% in 2017), surpassed by the increase of US investors (40% in 2018 vs 23% in 2017) and the entrance of new investors from Thailand (8%) and México (4%).

The report also emphasizes how the estimated investment figures have been greatly increased by portfolio transactions and significant assets, which represented more than 60% of the investment volume in the whole country. Blackstone, which was the main player in 2017 with the purchase of the HI Partners portfolio (€630 million), has been the main protagonist in 2018 with the purchase of 48 hotels from the Hispania REIT portfolio, for €1,900 million. Likewise, transactions like the purchase of the Atom Hoteles portfolio, the joining of the Chinese group Gaw Capital and the increase of the participation of Omega Capital in Hospes hotel chain, the nine urban hotels Silken portfolio acquired by CBRE Global Investment Partners and Pygmalion Capital Advisers LLP, the takeover of NH Hotel Group by Minor International, and the purchase of Hotel Villa Magna by the Mexican REIT RLH Properties for €210 million (with a record price per room of €1.4 million) caused the total volume transacted in Spain in 2018 to once again beat all previous records.

Christie & Co, as in the report "Hotel Investment Overview - Spain 2017" published in February 2018, highlights again the interest aroused by secondary destinations, generating 23% of the total investment, with a 65% increase in comparison to 2017 (in which investment in secondary locations was 14% of the total investment volume). This percentage reflects that three out of ten rooms that changed ownership were not located in the main Spanish urban or holiday destinations.

With regards to the investment volume in primary locations (over €3,700 million), resort destinations continue to outstrip urban destinations as they did in 2017 (64% of investment in resort destinations compared to 36% in urban destinations). In 2018, investment both in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands represented more than 50% of the total volume (vs. 40% in 2017), causing a slight decline in urban destinations whose investment continues to be led by Madrid (12% of total investment in 2018 vs. 16% in 2017), followed by Sevilla (which enters the podium with 4.5%) which surpassed Barcelona (3.5% in 2018 vs. 9% in 2017), and Malaga (which in 2018 dropped to 2.9% vs. 4% in 2017).

Finally, the analysis shows how almost 93% of transactions carried out in 2018 (vs. 90% in 2017) were concentrated again in the same six Spanish regions than in the previous year: the Canary Islands (29.6%), the Balearic Islands (21%), Andalusia (16.5%), Community of Madrid (12.9%), Catalonia (6.8%) and the Valencian Community (6.3%). Regarding the average price per room per region, the Canary Islands led the ranking in the resort market, with €140,000 per room, while the Community of Madrid led in the case of urban destinations with an average price over €200,000 per room.

Inmaculada Ranera, Managing Director at Christie & Co Spain & Portugal, comments “The Spanish hotel industry continues to prove its resilience to the economic and political uncertainties that drive the global agenda and, despite noticing the effects of the recovery of Mediterranean resort destinations, the main coastal destinations in Spain maintain stable KPIs (occupancy, ADR and RevPAR). Urban destinations have proven to be solid markets resisting uncertainty related to security issues. Therefore, it is not surprising that the positive evolution of a sector which remains key for Spanish economy and continues to attract investment appetite, especially from foreign investors.”

Christie & Co publishes special report on Chinese cultural & tourism village and theme park market

Following the success of the second annual ‘Cultural & Tourism Village’ session at the 12th China Tourism Forum in November 2018, co-hosted with the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), specialist business property adviser, Christie & Co has published a special report, ‘Cultural & Tourism Villages and Theme Parks,’ with support from the SHTM Hotel and Tourism Research Center and the guests at the first annual ‘Cultural & Tourism Village’ session in 2017.
Christie & Co’s report analyses the global theme park market, top theme park groups and the development of cultural & tourism villages in China. As the Chinese tourism market continues to boom, fuelled by increasing household incomes and the support of central and local governments, the report identifies the emerging concept of cultural & tourism villages as an investment hotspot within the Chinese tourism market.

The report considers the scale of the global theme park market, in terms of both visitor numbers and total revenue, finding that while the North American market remains the largest, the Asian Pacific market is the fastest growing region, with a compound annual growth rate of 7% in the Asian Pacific from 2011 to 2016. The North American and Asian Pacific markets are expected to dominate the global market in the future, accounting for an estimated 85% of the market by 2020.

Following analysis of the top 10 theme park markets, the report identifies the top three as the United States, Japan and China. The Chinese market has positioned itself as the third largest theme park market, growing at a compound annual rate of 16.8% from 2011 to 2016. The country's proportion of the global income was around 11% in 2016 and is expected to reach 14% in 2020.

Global theme park groups currently leverage ‘intellectual property’ (IP) to create experiential entertainment to differentiate themselves and attract more visitors, and destination theme parks construct a strong ‘theme IP’ in order to increase the popularity of the park, generate income and influence longer overnight stays. In terms of global branded theme parks, Disney is positioned as the market leader, accounting for approximately 30% of global consumption with 12% of global attendance in 2016. Top global theme park brands, namely Disney, Merlin’s Legoland, Universal Studios and Six Flags, have already entered the Chinese market due to its increasingly high demand for new theme parks.

According to National Bureau of Statistics of China, the total number of tourists in 2017 exceeded 5 billion, marking an 85% increase from 2011 to 2017 and a compound annual growth over 10%. China’s theme park market grew rapidly from 2000 to 2014, accelerated by the emerging concept of cultural & tourism villages, first introduced by the Chinese Government in 2015 in order to accelerate the urbanisation of villages and foster faster industrial growth in rural areas. The Chinese theme park market is expected to continue to grow rapidly alongside the development and growth of cultural & tourism villages.

Joanne Jia, Head of Asia at Christie & Co comments, “Christie & Co is currently assisting a number of global theme park groups and IP owners to enter the growing Chinese tourism market, and we are seeing an increasing number of overseas groups looking to enter this exciting market. The advantages and risks of different strategies to entering the market and managing planning, construction, operation and management should be considered. Although many overseas groups have adopted a sino-foreign joint venture strategy with a Chinese group or government, the lease agreement, management contract and franchise models can still prove to be advantageous. Most importantly, intellectual property will remain a key catalyst to the success of theme parks and cultural & tourism villages and remains an essential component for investors and operators.”


 

Christie & Co, Conseil en immobilier leader en Europe vient de publier l'édition 2017 des villes espagnoles les plus compétitives (en anglais)

Following their strategy of sharing useful information with the market by means of reports on relevant areas or cities to the tourism industry, Christie & Co now presents a new update (third year in a row) of its report "Hotel Market in Spain: Most Competitive Cities", which analyses the 2017 evolution of the hotel markets of Barcelona, San Sebastian, Madrid, Malaga, Seville, Bilbao and Valencia through its main parameters: hotel demand, offer and profitability.

According to the data of the Profitability and Employment Barometer of the Spanish Tourist Destinations 2017 published by Exceltur, the company has analysed the most competitive cities in the country which generate a greater interest among the main players in the tourism industry, that is investors and operators interested in being present in these cities.

The remarkable growth in relation to the arrival of national and international travellers in recent years continues to prove to be one of the key factors for the tourism and hotel industry recovery, consolidating these seven cities as the destinations with the highest RevPAR as far as urban destinations are concerned. It should be noted that the cities which have been analysed in the report accounted by themselves for a total of more than 53.7 million overnight stays in 2017, which represents the 15.8% of all overnight stays registered in Spain during the same period. Also, according to the report, these cities received around 24.3 million passengers in 2017 (+3.2% vs. 2016), a figure that represents more than 23.5% of the total number of travellers received throughout Spain in the whole year.

Reviewing the report, it’s seen that Barcelona is once again in the lead in terms of RevPAR, reaching the figure of 101.50 euros (increase of 5.8% over the 2016 RevPAR figures), followed by San Sebastián with 91.6 euros (+ 5.9% vs. 2016). Third position is for the city of Madrid (72.4 euros) which has recorded the largest RevPAR increase compared to the previous year, with a 14.4% rise percentage. All three cities have maintained their respective positions in the ranking for the last three years, progressively increasing their RevPAR levels. In relation to this indicator growth, Madrid, as said previously, obtains the highest increase, followed by Málaga (+12.8%), Valencia (+12.0%), Bilbao (+11.9%) and Seville (+9.5%), while San Sebastián (+5.9%) and Barcelona (+5.8%) close the list, although it needs to be noted that they both start from higher indicators than their competitors.

As for occupancy, Barcelona is the city with the highest percentage, up to 79.2% in 2017 (despite having suffered a -0.3% decrease with respect to 2016), followed by Malaga (77.8%) and Madrid (75.6%). Valencia, on the other hand, registers the lowest occupancy levels (69.8%), after Bilbao (73.6%) and San Sebastian (71.6%).

In terms of average price (ADR), San Sebastian is the city that leads the ranking, with 128.3 euros (+4.8% vs. 2016), and only one tenth ahead of Barcelona, which stands on the second place with 128.2 euros (+6.1% compared to 2016). Both are followed, at a considerable distance, by Madrid with 95.8 euros (+10.4% vs. 2016), Seville with 90.1 euros (+6.8% vs. 2016) and Malaga, with 89.7 euros in ADR, which is the city with a greater increase in average price compared to the previous year (+11.2%). The list concludes with Bilbao (84.2 euros of ADR and an increase of +9.4% compared to 2016) and Valencia (77.4 euros and +8.7% vs. 2016).

Finally, Christie & Co also reviews the pipeline of those upcoming projects that will be added to the existing hotel offer in all cities in the coming years once they have overcome the difficulties that some cities are putting to the development of new hotels. Madrid is, by far, the city with the largest number of new hotels planned (14 new projects of 5, 4, 3 and 1-star, which will be added to the 810 hotels registered in the city in 2017. Tied in second position, San Sebastian and Valencia foresee 8 new hotels. For San Sebastian, all of them will be 4-star, and will be added to the 141 existing hotels. For Valencia, the expected categories are 5 and 4-star, which will be added to the 145 hotels in operation in 2017. Barcelona is next, where the firm foresees the opening of 7 new projects (category 5, 4 and 3-star), to be added to the 650 existing hotels in the city. In Seville, 6 new projects are foreseen in the city (of categories 5 and 4-star) to increase its offer of 207 hotels. Finally, in Malaga and Bilbao, there are 5 planned projects in each city. In the case of Malaga, they will be 5 and 4-star (to add to the existing 85) and, in the case of Bilbao, 4-star, which will be added to the 67 existing hotels.

Joan Bagó, Analyst in the Christie & Co Spain & Portugal Consultancy Division, and responsible for the report, points out "The growing internationalisation of all the urban destinations analysed has generated significant increases in the average price, boosting to record levels profitability in 2017. However, domestic demand, traditionally more sensitive to price, has been affected, something that has contributed to a general stagnation in occupancy levels”.

Inmaculada Ranera, Managing Director Christie & Co Spain & Portugal, comments: "The most competitive cities in terms of profitability in Spain stand their leadership position very well. All of them, in addition to the business sector and domestic tourism, have in common the specific weight of the international visitor, which pushes these cities to have a quality hotel offer that allows them to obtain the highest ADR in urban tourism in Spain. Madrid, as capital, is the only city that, despite not having direct access or being close to the sea, resists this differential element and shows a regular growth since the end of 2014. Barcelona, despite the circumstances experienced in 2017, still leads the ranking, which shows that a tourism policy oriented to success has long-term consequences".

You can find this and other Christie & Co publications in our site: https://es.christie.com/en-gb/news-resources/publications/