Ace Boutique Hotels Have a New Owner

25.08.2023 - 14:18 / skift.com / Summer Olympics / Rashaad Jorden / Sean Oneill / Matthew Parsons

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, January 18. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

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Ace Hotel Group, a boutique hotel chain with 11 properties across the U.S., has been acquired by hospitality firm Sortis Holdings for $85 million, reports Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill.

Sortis is acquiring the Ace Group International, owner of the Ace brand, as well as the Maison de la Luz and Sister City brands. The Portland, Oregon-based firm, which owns restaurants and coffee chains, plans to double the number of Ace hotels worldwide over several years. As U.S. hotel development is quieter than usual, O’Neill writes companies like Sortis are looking at acquisitions as a way to surge ahead of their competitors.

Next, organizers of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris and U.S.-based event specialist On Location teamed up to launch an e-commerce website on Tuesday selling tickets with hospitality packages. Olympic officials claim the centralized platform is a first in the Games’ history, reports Corporate Travel Editor Matthew Parsons.

Parsons writes the packages, which can include hotels and local transport, bundle a ticket to a sporting event with access to an official entertainment venue. Roughly 90 percent of Olympic competitions are available with a hospitality offer. The International Olympic Committee said the sale of hospitality packages on the platform would help provide fans with a more accessible way to experience the 2024 Olympics in France.

We end today in New Mexico. The state’s decade-long tourism campaign has been credited with helping boost tourism despite criticism for allegedly having a lack of sensitivity toward the state’s Indigenous people, reports Contributor Samantha Shankman.

The New Mexico True campaign was launched with the aim of showcasing the state as a land of adventure steeped in culture. Shankman notes the campaign was successful in attracting visitors from Los Angeles, one of New Mexico’s main tourism source markets. The state’s tourism department estimates New Mexico True helped influence 80,000 trips in 2021, which generated $107 million in visitor spending.

However, Shankman writes that New Mexico True has received pushback, with some activists criticizing the campaign for furthering a colonial mindset regarding the state’s Indigenous population. Shankman cites in particular an ad that featured an artist who moved to the state describing the New Mexico landscape as her country without any mention of its original residents.