Accor buys 97 hotels from Moor Park, AXA for €900m

French hotel group Accor’s HotelInvest business has committed to buying two real estate portfolios consisting of 97 different hotels for a total sum of about €900m. The move comes as part of the hotel group’s plans to restructure its real estate business. HotelInvest claims to be the leading specialist hotel investor in Europe.

The first portfolio, representing 86 hotels and 11,286 rooms across Germany (67 hotels) and the Netherlands (19 hotels) has been operated by Accor since 2007 under variable-rent leases and the following brands: ibis (29 hotels), ibis budget (31 hotels), Mercure (17 hotels) and Novotel (9 hotels). The total consideration for the acquisition is €722 million, while the sellers are two funds, Moor Park Fund I and II, advised by Moor Park Capital Partners.

Separately, Accor has entered into exclusive negotiations with Axa Real Estate for a second portfolio representing 11 hotels and 1,592 rooms in Switzerland. This portfolio too has been operated by Accor since 2008 under variable-rent leases and the following brands: ibis (5 hotels), ibis budget (2 hotels), Novotel (3 hotels) and MGallery (1 hotel).

Accor said that both acquisitions will be accretive to the company’s EBIT in 2014. Based on proforma 2013 figures, the relative contribution of owned hotels to HotelInvest’s net operating income will increase by around 14 percentage points to 68%. HotelInvest has stated that it aims to raise this proportion to more than 75% over the medium term.

“The new hotels are fully aligned with our selective asset acquisition criteria: hotels located in key European cities and delivering excellent operating performance in our most profitable market segments”, said Sébastien Bazin, Accor’s chairman and CEO.

Meanwhile, property market research firm BulwienGesa report in a new hotel study that nearly one in three (15,300) of the 53,000 new hotel rooms built in German over the past five years was in Berlin. The study encompassed the 347 hotels or extensions of more than 40 rooms to existing facilities that were built since 2009.

At a good distance back came Hamburg with 4,600 rooms, Munich and Frankfurt with 3,400 each, Dresden with 2,010, and Cologne with 1.300 rooms. About 80% of the new rooms were from branded hotel chains, headed by Motel One with 6,400 new rooms in 23 new hotels, followed by French group B&B with 4,100 rooms – although given that their hotels tend to be smaller (at about 105 rooms on average), they led the field with the number of new openings, at 39, and have a further 14 hotels in the pipeline due for opening shortly.

In third place was the ibis family of hotels with 2,500 rooms in 20 hotels. Despite the fast growth of the budget chains, they totalled only 21.3% of new rooms on the market, underlining BulwienGesa’s claim that German B- and C-cities still lack sufficient modern hotel accommodation. Most of the actual new rooms on the market (43.7%) came from the four-star segment. Also now making a noticeable impact are the conversion of old office buildings into hotel accommodation, with the report highlighting one company A&O Hotels/Hostels, which opened nine hotels in the budget category with an average of 235 rooms over the period.