The name Leela is held in the same esteem as India's other legacy hotel brands such as Taj and Oberoi. Will it ever be the same again under Canada's Brookfield, an asset manager rather than a brand manager?

Leo Spriggs, President and CEO of Hospitality Management Corporation (HMC), is pleased to announce the addition of this 80-room Hampton Inn® in Snyder, Texas, to their portfolio of managed hotels. HMC continues its ongoing business expansion which is made up of full service, conference center, select service and limited service hotels. HMC is one of the country’s largest third-party privately held hotel management companies, ranked in the top 40 of all third party and owner operated hotel management corporations.

As of June 17, citizens of the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan no longer will need visas to enter Brazil, according to Brazil Tourism.

Skylar Skikos is co-founder and president of Local Framework, the newly introduced real estate development and acquisition arm of Palisades Hospitality Group (PHG), the operation and management company behind the Mosaic Hotel brand. Skikos told LODGING that Local Framework’s mission is to create highly individualized hospitality projects shaped with identity and purpose—a mission he believes is best accomplished by both owning and operating assets.

Leisure Real Estate Advisors, LLC, is pleased to announce it has arranged the sale of the Holiday Inn Express & Suites, Newton, KS. Leisure Real Estate Advisors, LLC based in metro Kansas City, represented a Kansas based developer, Broadway Hospitality, LLC. in the transaction. Newton Hotel Investments, Inc, an investment group based in Topeka and Kansas City, purchased the 68 unit hotel for an undisclosed price. The listing price was $5,300,000.

Investors in the Americas—98 percent of them, to be exact—still plan to remain active in real estate markets, but they will be more conservative in their acquisitions this year. That’s according to a survey of about 300 investors focused on the region who were surveyed as part of the “CBRE Americas Investor Intentions Survey 2019.”

Zuzu delivers an outsourced yield management solution for independent hotels.

Carter Frank, COO of In-Group Hospitality, is responsible for forecasting and adjusting hotel operations to maximize financial performance. However, Frank noticed the way his team was going about its decision-making process needed improvement in order to be more efficient.

Not many institutional investors question an issuer’s approach to cybersecurity, but maybe they should. After a cyber breach, companies are likely to suffer only a short-term hit to their share prices, according to a new study. But in the long run, they typically pay lower dividends and invest less in research and development, amounting to a “loss of their competitive edge.”

Driven by innovations in expense management technology and evolving corporate philosophies around T&E spending, companies are recognizing the value of actionable intelligence gleaned from T&E data. But even as systems advance and T&E is viewed not as simply a cost to control, accurate ROIs for travel spending remain an elusive goal.

Queensgate Investments has completed the acquisition of the Grange St Paul’s EC4, Grange Tower Bridge E1, Grange City EC3, and Grange Holborn WC1 for circa GBP 1 billion.

Miami-based real estate investment and development company Key International began development on an AC Hotel by Marriott in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The property, which was acquired in 2016 as three adjoining land parcels that span more than a half-acre, will consist of 171 guestrooms spread across 10 stories.

After a decade of consistent growth for the UK hotel sector, with RevPAR increasing on average 4% since 2010¹ and GDS agency sales increasing YOY currently by 9%, HotelREZ Hotels & Resorts is poised to celebrate its 15th anniversary by continuing to grow its portfolio.

General Electric on Thursday forecast another year of falling profits and negative cash flow in 2019 but investors appeared to be cheered by its assurances that things would be “significantly better” in 2020. The struggling conglomerate, which is in the midst of a major turnaround under new CEO Larry Culp, said it would make an adjusted profit of 50 to 60 cents per share this year — below analyst estimates of 70 cents — and lose as much as $2 billion in cash from its industrial operations.

Eric Horodas, President of Greystone Hotels, and Hugh Futrell, President of Hugh Futrell Corporation, announce new details on their upcoming joint project: the transformation of downtown Santa Rosa’s historic Empire Building and adjacent 19 Old Courthouse Square building into a 71-room boutique hotel. The Hotel E will be located at 37 Old Courthouse Square and will open to the public in two phases, with the first phase debuting in late spring 2019. The Hotel E will be the first new hotel in Santa Rosa since the devastating wildfires of October 2017. Renderings of the hotel can be found here and model room images can be found here.

Sage Hospitality, a Denver-based hotel investment, development and management company, along with Denver-based developer BMC Investments, announced the sale of the Halcyon hotel in Denver to Rockbridge Capital. Dallas-based Makeready will take over management of the property. In addition to the 154-key hotel, Rockbridge acquired the Halcyon and B&GC brands, which were developed and trademarked by Sage Hospitality.

Hotel Business is tracking transactions, with two properties being sold and one receiving financing.

E-commerce fraud prevention firm Forter has released its biannual Fraud Attack Index, which highlights the rapidly shifting e-commerce landscape and breaks down how changes in this fragile ecosystem can affect online merchants and their omni-channel offerings.

If there’s anyone who understands the true value of a holistic and cohesive revenue strategy it’s Mike Medsker, who has worked across many of the hotel departments that touch revenue, from sales to marketing to revenue management. Mike worked his way up from the property level to the corporate level before branching off to start his own revenue strategy consultancy, Focal Revenue Solutions.

Going global in the events sector is tough. Eventbrite has the added pressure of being a public company, and investors have soured on the company's potential despite its ambitious plans for a global event technology platform.

Most “uncertainty shocks” throughout history – like the 9/11 attacks, the 1973 OPEC oil price shock, or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy – generate a surge in uncertainty which subsides reasonably quickly. Markets learn about what has happened and typically gain more confidence over time.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) issued the following statement today from President and CEO Chip Rogers in response to the ruling by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit defeating Airbnb’s appeal to Santa Monica’s law regulating short-term rentals.

Continued favorable economic fundamentals are expected to lead to U.S. hotel rooms revenue per available room (RevPAR) growth of 2.5 percent in 2019 and 2.0 percent in 2020, according to the latest forecast from CBRE Hotels Americas Research.

This is a special case that I’ve been waiting to write about since it hit the airwaves here in Canada in late October. Most interesting here is that it has a few powerful implications for the fight traditional hotels are facing against industry disruptors coming in the form of home sharing.

There's good disruption and bad, and plenty of corporate travel buyers will argue whether the disruption in ground transportation by transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft has been good or bad for their travel programs. One thing's for sure: Business travelers overwhelmingly think it's good. They like the ease of the ridehailing app experience and are seduced by TNCs' low prices.

Hotel Business is tracking transactions. Rockbridge, Glenmont, Cambridge Landmark and HREC are making deals.