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Skift Travel News Blog

Short stories and posts about the daily news happenings around the travel industry.

Hotels

Bill Gates’ Four Seasons May Regret Hotel Deal Talks With Vatican

2 years ago

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts won a contract bid from an arm of the Roman Catholic Church to take over a property in Rome and build a new hotel. But Toronto-based Four Seasons — controlled by Bill Gates’s Cascade Investment — may come to regret submitting a bid for a potential $52.4 million (€35 million over 27 years) contract for a new hotel close to the Vatican.

Rival bidders are complaining, and some locals are up in arms, Corriere della Sera reported.

Four Seasons hadn’t publicized its last-minute entry. Its bid came in several million higher than ones from second-place finisher Blastness/Ripetta and third-place finisher Omnia/Lazzarini.

The jilted bidders have filed an appeal. The runner-ups claim they had been told to keep bids modest because this wasn’t meant to be an ultra-luxury project. The request for proposal said “four-star superior,” a lower designation in Italy’s hotel system, Corriere della Sera reported. About three dozen bidders had competed.

Some locals are also upset that the Vatican would allow a luxury hotel with 64 rooms, 11 suites, and a couple of sumptuous apartments to open.

The property is the ancient Palazzo della Rovere on Rome’s Via della Conciliazione, and it’s formerly the headquarters of the Jesuits.

The Renaissance-era structure needs renovations that Four Seasons can afford to pay for and handle skillfully. But Pope Francis has championed the poor in homily after homily. Will he be happy about this luxury project about 650-feet from St Peter’s Basilica?

See the 5,000-word piece in Italian from Corriere della Sera.

Food and Drink

IHG’s First-Quarter Average Daily Rates Now Back to 2019 Levels

2 years ago

IHG Hotels & Resorts’ 2022 first-quarter RevPAR increased 61 percent compared to the 2021 first quarter, and had now reached 82 percent of 2019’s level.

Its average daily rate was also up 27 percent versus 2021, and in line with 2019 levels, the company revealed on Friday in a trading update.

Americas and the Europe, Middle East Africa and Australia region saw sequentially improved trading in February and March after a challenging January.

However, it added Greater China trading in March impacted by tightening of localised travel restrictions.

“We’ve seen very positive trading conditions in the first quarter with travel demand continuing to increase in almost all of our key markets around the world,” said IHG CEO Keith Barr. “The high level of demand we have seen for leisure travel continues to drive increased rates and occupancy. We also continue to see a return of business and group travel, further supporting RevPAR improvements in many of our key urban markets.”

The hotel group also signed 17 thousand rooms into its development pipeline in the first quarter.

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