Quotes of the week: Choice Hotels, BWH Hotels, The Ascott Ltd.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We’re very committed to this transaction. We’ve been evaluating this over the last 10 months and there’s a lot of value to be created here. The strategic rationale is just simply too compelling not to see it all the way through. Seeing if there’s additional value to be unlocked – there can’t be additional value unlocked if we don’t reengage.” – Patrick Pacious, Choice Hotels  Read story

“We’re larger than Marriott Autograph Collection, Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and we’re the equivalent of Kimpton. But all of those are very well recognized brands; we weren’t. So, let’s put that as job number one – to get that recognition out there and do a better job of creating the story and experience around the WorldHotels brand.” – Ron Pohl, BWH Hotel Group  Read story

JLL’s latest Global Hotel Investor Sentiment Survey reveals that 81% of hotel investors plan to be net buyers over the next 12 months, which is the highest total ever recorded going back to the 2000 origin of this report.  Read story

“We’re looking at two types of experiences where we feel the growth is. One is luxury — the luxury of experiential space… The other is in experiential-led social living, where there’s a lot of interest in individuals coming together, wanting to communicate, having a community, having conversations and feeling connected… and coming into common social areas, to get to know each other.” – Serena Lim, The Ascott Ltd.  Read story

“I think we’re done with the apprehensions. It wasn’t a problem with the customer but with the investment community.” Hubert Viriot, Yotel, on microhotel development in Asia Pacific  Read story

“Lenders have put people in two buckets, haves and have nots. They immediately know which borrowers have the ability to sustain, feed the asset and get out of it, and those that are just not going to be able to survive. And the lender doesn’t want to deal with that latter type of a borrower anymore.” – Afshin Kateb, Palladius Capital Management  Read story

“When you get into this role, you see something different, which is the power of the enterprise on a global basis. I see a ton of potential for our company. We’re in the early stages of where we can go as an organization.” – Elie Maalouf, IHG  Read story

“We try to make lives easy for franchisees. They do not have to do anything if they don’t want to. They just need to select a location. They look at the hotel and [decide] what kind of brands they think it suits. We have the whole supply chain, we’ve got contractors, and we can get everything done for them. Then we also send hotel managers there; we recruit a whole management team for them. For accounting and booking, the whole financial system was centralized. They don’t have to deal with the localized financial bookkeeping stuff if they don’t want to… That is the key element of what we have learned. If they don’t have to worry about their construction, their management, their financials… then they’re happy to be your owners.” – Jihong He, H World Group Ltd.  Read story