Travel Industry Archive

Last week, Sunstone Hotel Investors defaulted on a San Diego W hotel and said it wanted to hand back the keys to its lender. This week, Sunstone is getting rid of another of its Southern California properties, the Marriott Riverside in Riverside, Calif. which has gross annual sales around $19.3 million. The San Clemente, Calif.-based Sunstone closed the sale today, so far without giving a...

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In a 8-K filed with the SEC this week, Continental revealed that its summer load factors were looking better than last year in the western hemisphere but worse in the long haul markets. A mixed bag of news, right? It’s actually more bad than good. The filing gave the following information: Region YOY Load Factor Difference Domestic +4 to 5 points Latin America +3 to 4 points ...

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Extended Stay files bankruptcy — Extended Stay Hotels, the Spartanburg, S.C. chain with 680 properties in 44 states, filed bankruptcy Monday. New Jersey-based Lightstone Group LLC purchased the company from Blackstone Group LP two years ago with $7.4 billion in financing – it had only $7.1 billion in assets and was $7.6 billion in debt by the end of 2008. Lightstone, a...

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Last month, I hoped that the massive declines in premium traffic had hit bottom. IATA’s April numbers are out, and while they might have some slight improvement, apparently May is looking bad again. In April, premium traffic was down 22 percent (compared to 19 percent in March) and revenue was down 44 percent (35 to 40 percent in March). Looks much worse, right? But remember that April...

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With all the talk about Twitter, the micro-blogging social media platform, as a business tool, it’s no wonder that the struggling hotel industry is now using it as a way to reach potential guests. When a friend of mine, who keeps a blog that covers restaurants, told the Twitterverse how she had a sub-par happy hour experience at Hyatt’s Andaz hotel in Los Angeles, the hotel (whose...

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Norwegian Cruise Line and Pepsi are offering free unlimited Pepsi-branded fountain beverages for those passengers booking a week-long cruise before Oct. 15. Although I couldn’t find the actual deal on the Norwegian Web site, I did find it on their Facebook page. The deal usually retails for $6.25 a day. Pepsi will also be having a sweepstakes with three NCL cruises as the grand...

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The nerd bird is dead. After 17 years of funneling the best and the brightest between Silicon Valley and Austin, American has decided to kill the flight. How sad. Back in 1992 when the flight started, most of the world knew nothing of the internet, but the computer industry was booming. Intel was working on the Pentium processor for its release the following year. And Dell had only rolled...

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Earlier today, I talked about Virgin America’s poor revenue performance, but there is a silver lining. They significantly reduced their costs in the quarter. Unit costs declined from 11.12 cents in the fourth quarter to 8.99 cents in the first quarter. That’s a big dip, though some of that benefit is thanks to the increased stage length. Regardless, it’s very good news for...

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Clark County building inspectors told to back off CityCenter project — Clark County building inspectors were told to use verbal warnings and communications rather than write up violations at MGM Mirage’s CityCenter project. Previously, inspectors failed to notice serious structural flaws at the Harmon Hotel, part of the CityCenter project, which caused MGM Mirage to cap the tower...

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From the looks of Virgin America’s press release announcing first quarter results, you would think the airline was turning in outstanding numbers. Unfortunately, that would be incorrect. Revenues are weak, and, as I said on Friday, cash is low. At least they’re making progress on costs, but I’ll save that discussion for my next post. The reason Virgin America’s...

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