Hotel Stocks Drop–Will Room Rates Follow?

Chris Shott — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:38:25 -0400

So much for the hotel boom.

The AP is reporting that shares of hospitality companies are tanking amid a gloomy outlook for travel in 2009.

New York-based companies Morgans Hotel Group and Starwood Hotel & Resorts were among those with the steepest declines during the Dow's overall 777-point freefall on Monday:

Starwood shares dropped $3.39, or 11.2 percent, to $26.88 in afternoon trading, after touching a 5-year low of $25.95 earlier in the session. Morgans Hotel shares lost $1.61, or 12.9 percent, to $10.83.

How will the financial crisis impact the city's ever-higher tourism projections? Will less demand for rooms trigger a drop in skyrocketing hotel rates?

Stay tuned.

New Hotel Both ‘Literary and Liquored Up!’

Chris Shott — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:20:52 -0400

Lost City, a blog chronicling the carnage wrought by New York's "ruthless real estate market," has nothing but praise for the planned redevelopment of midtown's Donnell library.

A deal between the New York Public Library and multinational corporation Orient-Express Hotels Ltd., as reported by the Times yesterday, promises to create "the most unusual, freakiest, mostly utterly New Yorky hotel in Gotham," according to the blog.

Under the deal, Orient-Express will buy the property for $59 million but -- holy historic preservation! -- the company "isn't going to demolish the library, as you might expect." Instead, "the branch will own and occupy space on the first floor and underground of the coming 11-story hotel."

Ever better -- this new hotel/library hybrid will connect to the old '21' club, which Orient-Express also owns.

"A low-rise hotel with a bonafied library in the basement and secret passageways to a former speakeasy. It's literary and liquored up! It's New York City in a neat little ball."

Observer » Orient-Express Hotels

Hotel Stocks Drop–Will Room Rates Follow?

New Hotel Both ‘Literary and Liquored Up!’