The New York Helmsley Hotel has drawn 15 different bidders — Tishman Hotel & Realty, for one, according to Crain’s, as the 773-room hotel clears its first round of bidding. Several of those potential buyers made offers exceeding $300 million, as industry insiders predict the second round of bidding for the hotel at 212 East 42nd Street near Third Avenue will be due by mid-December. Sean Hennessey, chief executive of Lodging Advisors market analytics group, said that the aggressive bids for the Helmsley are a good sign for the overall hospitality market in the city. “There are a lot of hotel-specific funds out there looking to put money to work,” Hennessey said. News that the Helmsley had hit the market first emerged in September. [Crain's]

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City overtaken by first-place London on occupancy, but still beats other global competitors

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From the May issue: New York hotels saw steep price declines last year and watched occupancy rates fall behind those of London, its main international rival. Still, the Big Apple fared better than Dubai and other high-end markets. Hotel occupancy, one of the key statistics tracked by the hospitality industry, dropped 5.7 percent to 77.2 percent in New York last year, putting it in third place behind London, which had an 80.5 percent occupancy rate, and Sydney, which logged 78.5 percent occupancy. That was a shift from 2008, when New York City had the highest hotel occupancy of all the cities tracked by The Real Deal, with an average of 81.9 percent of its rooms filled during the year, according to data from STR Global.

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From the October issue: Keeping heads in beds has not been easy for New York City’s hotel
industry in this economy. Not only are tourists cutting back on
expenses, but companies — including those that not too long ago
readily put up their employees at five-star hotels — are also
massively scaling back.
In this month’s Q & A, hotel experts and operators talked to The Real Deal about why the hospitality industry has fallen further here than it has nationally.
They said revenue per room, or RevPAR, is down between 20 and 30
percent and that the luxury hotel market (not surprisingly) is getting
crushed hardest.