Barcelona monopolizes 200 million in hotel investment since January

In the first five months of 2022, Catalonia has registered five operations in the hotel sector, all of them in Barcelona. The city has accumulated a global investment of 200 million euros, 90% more than between January and May of last year. The registered growth is the highest since 2017, in that period.

Several reasons point to the improvement of the sector. The main ones are high available liquidity, the recovery of activity, and the prospects for the rest of the year, according to the real estate consultancy CBRE.

The importance of transaction costs is highlighted since, according to the same source, the average size of hotels that have changed hands is 165 rooms, with an average price of 240,000 euros per room, 8% more than in 2021. Of the five operations, four have involved a change of brand in the management of the establishment.

Among them, the arrival on Passeig de Gràcia of the hotel firm Sonder, which has leased the former five-star Hotel Passeig de Gràcia, which was managed by the Hotusa group until its closure in December 2020, and which the Canadian brand will reopen in the second half of 2022. The same San Francisco chain has also recently taken over the management of the Le Palacete and La Casa del Sol hotels, in the Gràcia neighborhood, and the Vasanta Hotel Boutique, in the Eixample.

The director of hotels at CBRE, Gustavo Cumella de Montserrat, explains that all these operations have been carried out in Barcelona, ​​a trend difficult to see before the pandemic when the sector obtained "excellent operating results" that gave viability to projects and, therefore, "there was reduced interest from owners in divesting positions."

In 2022, the sector is progressively recovering, after two years with a decline in employment and the temporary or permanent closure of some establishments. According to data from the Barcelona Hotel Guild, in December 2021, only 73% of the city's establishments had reopened. Meanwhile, before last Easter, the percentage of closed hotels had been reduced to 17%.

Approaching one billion for Spain as a whole

For Spain as a whole, according to the consultancy CBRE, investment in the hotel sector between last January and March was 995 million euros, triple that in the same period of 2021, which positions this quarter as the best in the last 10 years.

In the first quarter of this year, operations were closed for a total of 37 hotel assets and 5,042 rooms --compared to 11 hotels and 643 rooms in the same period of 2021-- and, of the 37 hotels, 19 were four-star and six were five-star.

By segments, investment in holiday hotels was 57% and in the urban segment 43%, while capital came from institutional investors and 78% from the hotel sector itself. 41% of investments are of Spanish origin and 20% German.