News blog tips

AccorInvest, a hotel owner-operator company that global hotel group Accor created in 2017, is seeing a rising share of its outstanding debt owned by one player, the hedge fund Sculptor, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.

Alex Lasry has been sworn in as the new deputy assistant secretary for travel and tourism at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Lasry will report to Brian Beall, director of travel and tourism, who started on May 8.

TBO has acquired Jumbonline, an online booking system by Jump Tours Group. TBO Co-Founder Gaurav Bhatnagar made the announcement on LinkedIn on Monday. Based in India, TBO.com is a travel distribution platform.

Los Angeles’ city council appeared this week to have reached a political compromise with the local hotel workers’s union about a controversial plan to mandate that hotels temporarily house the homeless.

Ambuja Neotia, a real-estate developer and operator in Kolkata, has bought Tree of Life Resorts and Hotels, a collection of 14 boutique hotels across India with about 200 rooms that Skift recently profiled.

The Dallas area has topped national rankings for hotel development for more than a year as the Texas capital enjoys a hotel building boom.

Choice Hotels on Wednesday called on Wyndham Hotels & Resorts to return to merger talks while publicly responding to concerns Wyndham executives had raised about “execution risk” — including questions about regulatory scrutiny.

Accor has signaled over several years that it plans to become more asset-light. Bloomberg News is reporting that the Paris-based hotel giant is about to take more steps to do so by selling hotels.

Michelin Guide, whose star ratings are coveted by restaurants worldwide, said on Thursday it would begin designating “the most exceptional hotels.”

Hyatt said on Thursday it would shift its strategy in marketing vacation rentals. It plans to launch before year-end a short-term vacation rental platform called Homes & Hideaways by World of Hyatt.

Marriott International on Wednesday debuted Four Points Express by Sheraton, a midscale hotel brand aimed at Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Marriott International said it was streamlining its ongoing process of installing charging infrastructure for electric vehicles at its properties by signing a deal with the vendor EV Connect as its preferred EV charging provider for its properties in the U.S. and Canada.

CDS Groupe, a hotel booking platform for business travel, is expanding into the German market through an acquisition. 

Selina, a hotel and experiences brand focused on youth travelers, said on Wednesday that its financial metrics were trending in the right direction as it reported earnings results.

Travelers United’s choice to sue Hyatt over its “junk fee” practices fits into a broader storyline about travel junk fees being in the limelight ever since President Joe Biden referred to travel fees in his 2023 State of the Union address.

Busbud, an online marketplace for bus and other ground transport tickets, is now offering more software services to operators in that industry following a company acquisition. 

Following a legal battle that lasted 11 years, American Airlines Group wants to force defendant Sabre Corp to pay its legal fees. 

Nick Jones said on Wednesday that he would step down from being CEO of Membership Collective Group nearly three decades since he founded the original Soho House that eventually led to the creation of the public company and owner of the Soho House chain.

Ireland’s overseas inbound tourism level for the year is set to hit 75 percent of 2019 levels, CEO of Tourism Ireland Niall Gibbons told The Sunday Times (London).

Operating performance at many hotels worldwide is getting closer to pre-pandemic levels, according to a Hotels Global Asset Management Report released on Tuesday by JLL Hotels & Hospitality — an investment advisory firm that helps manage more than $6.8 billion in hotel assets.

A mix of international tensions, economic turmoil, and political tension is causing many travelers to rethink the destinations they’re prioritizing on their “bucket lists” in 2023, according to an article on Wednesday in Toronto’s The Globe and Mail.