‘Year of firsts’ for Marriott International
In what chief executive Arne Sorenson describes as a ‘year of firsts’ for the group, Marriott saw RevPAR jump by 4.3 per cent in 2013, having signed a record 67,000 new rooms over the 12-month period.
“Strong RevPAR growth and new hotels drove Marriott’s fee revenue to a record $1.5bn,” said Sorenson. “We signed contracts with owners and franchisees for 67,000 new rooms - the most productive year in our history averaging more than one hotel every day. Our development pipeline reached a record 195,000 rooms.
“Marriott Rewards and Ritz-Carlton Rewards (the group’s membership schemes) signed a combined 3.4 million new members, contributing to the nearly 50 per cent growth in membership over the past five years.”
The positive financial year results come in the same week that Marriott revealed it would be adding a mobile checkout function to its smartphone app. The Marriott Mobile app, which has already been downloaded over 2.8 million times, now allows guests to check-in and checkout at the touch of a button and is available at 348 of the luxury hotel brand’s 500 properties across the globe.
Looking to the year ahead, Sorenson added: “For 2014, we expect worldwide system-wide RevPAR to increase by 4 to 6 percent. With our strong development pipeline and the anticipated addition of the Protea hotels in Africa, we expect rooms growth will accelerate to approximately 6 per cent gross, or roughly 5 per cent net, of deletions.
Millennium & Copthorne results
Meanwhile, UK-based international hotel group Millennium & Copthorne (M&C) has also posted a strong set of 2013 results, with group revenue hitting a record level of £1.04bn, and pre-tax profit up to £167.7m, from £54.2m in the same quarter a year earlier.
Going forward, M&C’s chairman Kwek Lend Beng is ‘cautiously optimistic’ about the group’s full-year performance for the current financial year.
"Our performance will be further impacted by our refurbishment programme and the resulting temporary removal of rooms from inventory," he said.
Earlier this week, IHG announced ‘strong growth’ in Europe over the past 12 months, driven in part by impressive performance from its UK hotels; while Accor saw profits continue to nudge upwards last year on the back of market improvements and an aggressive cost-saving strategy.
