Hotel guests of Hilton will soon be able to rest and recharge themselves — and their own electric vehicle at the same time. The popular hotel chain has teamed up with Tesla to add 20,000 Universal Wall Connectors at 2,000 Hilton hotel properties throughout North America, Hilton shared with Travel + Leisure this week. Each hotel will have at least six chargers on-site, creating the largest overnight electric vehicle charging network. The first locations distributed across the United States, Canada, and Mexico will come online in early 2024. “Through this expanded agreement with Tesla, we are significantly changing the landscape of universal EV chargers in North America in an incredibly short amount of time,” Hilton’s Chief Brand Officer Matt Schuyler said of the hotel company's announcement.
Wyndham Believes Banking Crisis Won't Hurt Its Hotel Pipeline
25.08.2023 - 13:47 / skift.com / Sean Oneill / Michele Allen
Wyndham‘s executives believe that investor concerns that the U.S. banking crisis will hurt its hotel development are groundless.
The world’s largest hotel franchisor said on Thursday during an earnings call that it hadn’t seen signs that March’s bank collapses — which led to deposit flight and tightened lending in the U.S. — had hurt the availability of financing that underpins the development of its U.S.-based select-service hotels.
“We feel really strong about the 2023 financing situation,” said Michele Allen, chief financial officer.
In response to multiple analyst questions on this topic, the Parsippany, New Jersey-based hotel operator noted that between a third and a half of its hotel conversions and new constructions had financing in place.
“We’re not concerned about financing largely for new construction projects that don’t currently have financing in place,” Allen said. “There certainly seems to be a good amount of capital still available. And on the conversion side, … we’ve got 40 deals executed since that March 10 date [the peak of the banking scare]. That’s actually up versus the same time last year. And then we’re also seeing buy/sell volumes across our portfolio increase year-over-year.”
Some analysts feel the claims makes sense.
“Fears over the pipeline and net unit growth outlook are overdone,” wrote Steven Pizzella, a research analyst at Deutsche Bank, in a report released before the earnings call.
Yet the financing topic for hotel development was top of mind for other analysts on Thursday’s call.
Yet Wyndham’s executives argued that their owner and developer community had been somewhat insulated from the tightening in U.S. credit. Many of its franchisees are seasoned pros with well-capitalized organizations with long-standing relationships with regional banks, they said.
The executives also noted that rising interest rates affect all types of commercial real estate, but hotels are perceived by lenders as relatively attractive. Hotels can continuously adjust nightly rates to offset some of the rising inflation or interest rate impacts. That helps encourage loans for hotel development.
Wyndham on Thursday used a hypothetical example to illustrate. In a case where new financing to construct a new U.S. hotel had an interest expense of 7 percent — notably above the recent decade-long average — a 70-room property flagged with one of Wyndham’s economy brands in the U.S. would still generate an average cash return of 16 percent a year on a $1.5 million loan to a typically qualified franchisee.
This rough calculation assumed average U.S. land costs for new construction and accounted for today’s wage inflation. That return is favorable compared to other potential commercial real-estate
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