Tourism will live in 2023 the year of recovery. The figures registered both at Easter and on the May bridge augur figures above those registered in 2019, which was already a record year at that time. Inflation and high prices are not stopping the desire to travel, however, they are having an impact on this industry, specifically with regard to hotel investment.
During the first three months of the year, the hotel sector reached an investment of 400 million euros, a figure that represents a drop of 59% compared to the same period of 2022 and 22% less if compared to the average of the first quarter of the last five years. Nearly 60% of those 400 million has relapsed only in two operations. This is the sale by Angelo Gordon of the Dolce Sitges hotel to Perial Asset Management and the purchase by Blasson Property and Axa of the Sofía hotel in Barcelona for 180 million.
“There has been a fairly considerable fall in terms of investment. The impact of the cost of financing is highly relevant, above all, for all institutional investors. The vast majority of assets are in the hands of hotel chains and private hoteliers. Normally these types of owners are not so interconnected with the capital market and in the end when they put an asset up for sale their price expectations are given by how well the sector is doing, but it does not correspond to what is happening in the market. investor".
The market right now is mismatched “where the expectations of the seller don't match the expectations that investors have on the other side of the table. Normally the profiles of who buys and sells are not always the same and that in some way makes transactionality difficult”.
Despite the fact that the year has not started on the right foot in the hotel sector, forecasts for the coming months of the year are quite good. “The prospects for the second quarter are good. There are several operations that are cooking that are going to make the second quarter quite good”.
During the first three months of the year, a total of 12 hotel assets with 1,826 rooms were transacted, compared to 39 hotels and 5,475 rooms in the same period of the previous year. High-end hotels continue to lead investment, with hotels with more than five stars representing more than 70% of all transactions, followed by three-star (15%) and four-star (14%) hotels. It should also be noted that this quarter 100% of the volume has been allocated to the investment of individual assets.
By territory, Catalonia has positioned itself as the favorite destination for investors, concentrating 63% of the total volume, 252 million, followed by the Canary and Balearic Islands, each accumulating 14% of the investment.
