Madrid based Room Mate Hotels has signed a 25 year lease on a new design hotel currently being developed on Amsterdam’s “IJ” waterfront.

The 293-guestroom hotel is currently being developed as part of the IJDock, which will also house the city of Amsterdam’s justice offices and courts and a marina. It overlooks the IJ estuary, Amsterdam’s former seafront and is just a couple of minutes walk from the city’s central railway and busstation. The ferry across the water from the station will take travellers to the north side of the city, home of the spectacular new EYE film museum.

Designed by Dutch architect Jan Bakers, the all-glass new hotel is scheduled to finish by the end of the year. Then Spanish designer Tomas Alia will oversee the interior decoration of the Room Mate Hotel to be finished in spring 2013. Alia already designed several hotels for Room Mate, which properties are being famous for being centered around a fictional personality or friend who knows the city’s ins and outs. Room Mate operates mainly in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, Oviedo, Granada, Salamanca) but also has hotels in New York, Miami Beach, Mexico City and Buenos Aires. Other than the Amsterdam opening, Room Mate Hotels will also open in Italy, England and Colombia plus more hotels for Madrid and Barcelona.

Room Mate Amsterdam, which has no personal name yet (I would suggest Room-Mate “Chiel”) will also feature a large restaurant overlooking the marina, part of the complex, plus a gym and spa.

High street clothing and home furnishings chain Laura Ashley has acquired the 49-room Edgwarebury Hotel in the village of Elstree, north of London, for £5.8 million from Corus Hotels, whose parent company, Malayan United Industries, is a major shareholder in Laura Ashley. The Tudor-style property is to be relaunched later this year as a boutique hotel showcasing Laura Ashley’s furnishings and design service. The sale reduces Corus Hotels’ UK portfolio to nine properties.

A little more than three weeks since it acquired three hotels in Germany, HPI Hotelbesitz GmbH has purchased the freehold of the Ibis Prague Karlin in the Czech Republic. HPI intends to renovate the 226-room hotel to bring it in line with the brand standards of its sister company, Pentahotels. The hotel will be rebranded later this year when the work is complete but in the meantime Accor’s Ibis brand will continue to manage the property. Several Pentahotels are featured on stylehotelsweb, a property in Beijing opened recently.

Of the Von Essen Hotels, which went into administration last year, only two out of 27 hotels remain unsold, the Ston Easton Park near Bath and the Sharrow Bay in the Lake District of northern England. This week three Von Essen’s were sold: The Royal Crescent in Bath, the Congham Hall in Norfolk and the Seaham Hall in Durham. The latter was featured on stylehotelsweb for some time, but was getting some bad reviews. Hopefully it will pick up again under new ownership and welcome it back on stylehotelsweb.

InterContinental Hotels Group has opened its second Hotel Indigo property in Scotland. The Hotel Indigo Edinburgh is housed in an 18th-century listed building (previously the Osbourne Hotel and originally five residential properties) at the heart of Edinburgh’s “New” Town. The 60-room hotel, owned by Sojourn Hotels, joins its sister property the 94-room Hotel Indigo Glasgow.

Marriott International is considering selling its three Edition hotels (New York, London, Miami Beach) to fund an expansion of the lifestyle brand created with Ian Schrager. “We already have interested buyers,” said Arne Sorensen in a recent interview. “We’re willing to put in more money to expand Edition,” added Mr Sorenson, who is set to replace Bill Marriott as chief executive officer at the end of the month. Marriott would continue to operate the properties after the sale. Besides those three locations, Marriott has announced Editions for Bangkok and Abu Dhabi. Marriott has a stated commitment of US$800 million to develop the Edition brand, an atypical move for the company that is primarily focused on managing hotels. The Edition brand has had a rocky start with only two Edition-branded hotels opened so far in Istanbul and Honolulu, and the Honolulu hotel has since rebranded amid legal acrimony between the hotel’s owner and Marriott.

Africa’s first easyHotel is to open later this year in Johannesburg, South Africa. Work is due to start next month on the 120-room easyHotel Rissik Street, which is being developed over three floors of the city’s former Stuttafords department store, and it is expected to open in November 2012. The budget hotel will be the first fruit of a 20-year master franchise agreement between easyHotel and African conglomerate Lonrho, which will see a total of 50 easyHotels open across the African continent by 2016.

Aloft Tucson University, a former Four Points by Sheraton property, will undergo a complete renovation before opening in the first half of 2013. The 150-room hotel is owned by Starwood, demonstrating the company’s commitment to the fast-

growing, three-year-old Aloft brand. In September, Aloft announced its first conversion project, Aloft San Francisco Airport (a former Clarion Hotel) set to open this fall. Additionally, Aloft’s “green” adaptive reuse of Dallas’ historic Santa Fe Railroad terminal won multiple awards from a local preservation group in 2010.“We continue to see two types of opportunities as ideal candidates for an Aloft conversion: Hotels built in the ‘70s or ‘80s in need of renovation, and unique independent boutique hotels seeking a stronger brand point of view and the ability to utilize Starwood systems,” said Allison Reid, Senior Vice President of North American Development for Starwood.

The Mövenpick Hotel Lausanne, Switzerland, has unveiled three new conference rooms and 72 stylish new business rooms following the completion of a major six-floor extension project. The business rooms in the newly built North wing are designed to satisfy a new generation of business travellers who not only need fast Wi-Fi and a safe place to store their laptops, but also a room that is contemporary as well as comfortable. New elements include a cutting edge ‘open space’ bathrooms with individual walk-in Italian style rain showers and separate toilet; a pillow menu with six different options; a 32-inch, 135-channel LED television; a Nespresso coffee machine; private balcony and an inviting interior design featuring soothing tones of dark purple offset by beige headboards, wooden motifs, bold carpets and historic images of the Ouchy area from Lausanne Museum.

Sheraton Hotels will be opening 20 new hotels, 12 in China alone, this year. The iconic brand will mark a milestone later this year with the opening of the nearly 4,000-room Sheraton Macao, which will be the largest Sheraton, as well as the largest Starwood hotel in the world. Offering three restaurants with poolside cafes, 140,000 square feet of meeting space and two outdoor swimming pools, Sheraton Macao is a highly anticipated addition to Cotai Strip, also known as the “Las Vegas of Asia.”

Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group and Edwardian Group Limited, announced they will rebrand all Radisson Edwardian Hotels, a portfolio of 13 hotels in the United Kingdom and Manchester, to the Radisson Blu brand by the second half of the year.

Melia’s contemporary city-centre Innside brand, which it acquired in 2007 has signed its first hotel in the UK. Construction is set to begin on the four-star, 208-bedroom Innside Manchester Hotel during the second half of 2012. The hotel will form part of the new multi-use First Street North development. Innside by Melia currently operates nine properties in Germany and one is set to open in Barcelona.

The Rezidor Hotel Group and Al Jassim Group have announced a 2015 opening for the Hotel Missoni Doha (Qatar). The luxury lifestyle hotel will be exclusively designed by Rosita Missoni and feature approximately 200 rooms and 70 serviced apartments. The hotel will be built along the C Ring Road in the heart of Doha, just 10 minutes from the International Airport. The extensive food and beverage outlets will comprise Hotel Missoni’s signature restaurant “Cucina” with a traditional yet creative Italian menu, a second all-day-dining restaurant, Bar Missoni, a pool bar and a lobby lounge. Guests will benefit from an 800 square meter Spa- and fitness area, an outdoor swimming pool, approximately 1,500 square meter conference- and banquet facilities including ball room, and a business centre. Hotels Missoni are operated in Edinburgh and in Kuwait; further properties are under development in Oman, Turkey, Brazil and Mauritius.

Rezidor also announced this week the rebranding of the 583-room Ramada Plaza Doha Hotel into a Radisson Blu Hotel in the third quarter of 2012.

Even more Qatar hotel news: the June, 2013 scheduled Nikki Beach Resort & Spa, The Pearl-Qatar has already won an AAA five-star diamond award as best design for a boutique beach resort in the Middle East. That is slightly odd for a hotel which even has opened yet. Designed by the award winning Singapore-based ECO ID Architects with interior design by Gatserelia Design, the Nikki Beach is a $45m boutique beachfront resort with 47-luxury villas and spa suites. The development will include Satine, a pan Asian specialty restaurant, NikkiSpa by Espa, Envy, the Ultra VIP lounge, a signature Nikki Beach Club with private plunge pools, a Tone Fitness Center and many other guest amenities.

HotelChatter reports that an offshoot of the Soho House Group will open in Chicago’s West Loop/Fulton Market area inside a vacant warehouse. Soho House would install about 50 rooms, a signature restaurant and a rooftop pool.

Our December 26 report on the Clark Hotel in Los Angeles suggesting that King & Grove was to be the new operator of New York’s Chelsea Hotel was right. This month comes the news that King & Grove are also taking over the management of the brand-new opened Hotel Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. The Chetrit Group, owner of the Clark Hotel and the Chelsea Hotel is close to an agreement buying the Hotel Williamsburg, currently operated by Graves Hospitality from Minneapolis.

The ill-fated Cipriani hotel project in Miami Beach finally is getting afoot. Only no longer under the Cipriani name, but under its original name, The Saxony. Argentine hip hotelier Alan Faena of Buenos Aires’ Faena Hotel fame is taking on the project. A condo tower by star architects Foster and Partners is being added and the Faena Saxony Hotel as it is called now is “coming soon” we see at the Faena website.

The Spanish mission styled 97-room Canary Hotel in Santa Barbara, now with The Leading Hotels of the World, is being sold to Kimpton Hotels for $40m.

The pop-up phenomenon may be old news in retail and restaurants, but temporary hotels is a concept just gaining ground (makeshift bedrooms in Kreuzberg or Nakameguro art galleries excepted). Today the Berlin-based Design Hotels group is staking the first big claim to the trend on the beach in Tulum, Mexico. The company’s founder, Claus Sendlinger, who moved with his family to Tulum last year, is spearheading the opening of Papaya Playa, a spiffed-up campus of cabanas once belonging to three now-shuttered resorts on about a half mile of beachfront land.

He brought in his creative team from Berlin to make simple stylish improvements to the 99 structures — “make it a bit more comfortable but keep the rawness,” he says — leaving about half of them with shared bathrooms, including a clutch of jungle huts with communal bunk beds that rent for $25 a night to the many backpackers, yogis and spiritual nomads who regularly drift through town. But Occupy Tulum this isn’t. There are 40 ocean-facing cabanas with private decks and hammocks, a spa, a boutique, raw food to go from 42°Raw, and a restaurant run by the folks behind Bar 25 andKaterHolzig in Berlin. An international network of D.J.’s and artists will provide weekly entertainment and contribute to monthly full-moon events dreamed up by the Berlin creative agency Mamapapcola. “The fun part is that we brought our friends,” says Sendlinger, who adds that no one’s arm had to be twisted; most of them were already fans of Tulum.

Sendlinger himself is a longtime blow-in to the area, and he’d had his eye on this piece of land for six years before finally making a deal with its owner. Five years ago, he says, such an arrangement wouldn’t have been possible, but the financial crisis has created more opportunities in the hotel business for those who are “good at moving into a temporary space and creating something. I see this happening more and more.” And if it works this winter, it may become permanent — with some further construction and the help of solar and wind power. What won’t happen is a 500-room tower or luxury condos. “That would kill Tulum,” he says. “We want our kids to have as much as possible the same Tulum as we have.”

Hotel Matilda, the trend-setting boutique hotel offering a lifestyle-focused guest experience, has become the newest member of Design Hotels, and the only member of the international collection in San Miguel de Allende.

“Hotel Matilda was created with vision and passion, and endowed with a pulsating heartbeat of art and design, making us a perfect match with Design Hotels,” said General Manager Bruce James. “We look forward to a synergistic relationship that powers marketing and sales as well as reinforces our image.”

Hotel Matilda is a cutting-edge boutique hotel with designer rooms and suites, an innovative holistic spa, gourmet dining blending classic Mexican with today’s international trends and tastes, a popular lounge where the latest mixology meets indigenous fruits and herbs, and a vibrant, gallery-like ambiance that is filled with dramatic contemporary art.

Hotel Matilda followed its own original and iconoclastic path. While every other hotel in San Miguel de Allende immerses guests in the town’s famed colonial ambiance, Hotel Matilda created an edgy environment that celebrates the lifestyle of today’s international travel. In an art-gallery-like décor of white- and graphite-colored walls, Hotel Matilda was filled with an eclectic collection of art, with many major works – that frame and define entire spaces –commissioned specifically for the property.

The crown jewel of colonial Mexico, San Miguel de Allende is a UNESCO World Heritage Site celebrated for its intact 500-year-old Spanish architecture, charming Old World ambience and art schools that draw budding artists from many countries. San Miguel de Allende is located in the central highlands of Mexico about a three-hour drive from Mexico City. American, Aeromexico and Continental airlines fly from the U.S. to Leon/Guanajuato Airport, which is a 1.5- hour drive from San Miguel de Allende. Hotel Matilda can arrange airport transfers.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide announced  that it has signed an agreement to acquire 49.8% of the shares of Design Hotels AG from Arabella Hospitality, Starwood’s longtime partner in Germany. Berlin-based Design Hotels, a publicly traded company and provider of distribution, sales, marketing and consulting services for hotels boasts a portfolio of over 200 member hotels in 40 countries. Design Hotels’ collection of hotels are independently owned, but united by a passion for thought-provoking design, aesthetic and service-driven experiences.

The opportunity to acquire a stake in Design Hotels came through Starwood’s relationship with Arabella Hospitality, which recently re-focused its hotel strategy mainly on ownership and asset management and as a result chose to divest its shares in Design Hotels. Starwood continues to manage or franchise 20 of Arabella Hospitality hotels in Europe.

“This is an investment presented to us by a longtime partner,” said Frits van Paasschen, President and CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. “With our own passion for design and innovation, we have long admired Design Hotels, its founder, CEO Claus Sendlinger, and his executive team, who have worked closely with some of the world’s most exciting independent hotel owners to curate a unique collection of hotels around the globe. As a shareholder, we are delighted to have a seat at the table of this dynamic company.”

“Arabella Hospitality has been an enthusiastic shareholder of Design Hotels for a decade. We are extremely pleased to transfer our shares to our long-term partner Starwood, an international player with extensive experience in lifestyle and design-led branding,” said Dr. Klaus N. Naeve, Chairman of the Administrative Board of Arabella Hospitality.

“Having Starwood with its leading global footprint and lifestyle brands as an investor is a further validation that Design Hotels is a strong brand of global relevance as we continue to grow and focus on our niche in the New Luxury hotel segment,” said Claus Sendlinger. “Furthermore, Starwood has a keen appreciation for what makes Design Hotels distinct and special, the creative spirit of our visionary hoteliers.”

According to van Paasschen and Sendlinger, Starwood will not be involved in the day-to-day operations of Design Hotels, nor will Design Hotels participate in any of Starwood’s centralized delivery systems including reservations and Starwood Preferred Guest.

The transaction, which is subject to anti-trust approval in Germany, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2012.

Four new Aloft hotels around the world have pushed the brand past its landmark 50th hotel opening.

The “style-at-a-steal” brand from Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, which launched in 2008, is now debuting the Aloft New York Brooklyn, Aloft Zhengzhou Shangjie and Aloft Haiyang in China, and Aloft Coimbatore Singanallur in India, to reach 52 hotels around the world. Starwood expects to increase its Aloft portfolio to more than 70 hotels by 2013.

“Aloft Hotels’ success comes from rewriting the rules of our industry, from the unprecedented pace of new hotel openings to its complete reinvention of the select-service category,” said Simon Turner, president of global development for Starwood.  “Demand for Aloft in North America has been particularly healthy and the potential for additional growth in fast-growing economies like China and India is enormous.”

Aloft will continue its global expansion with six additional hotels slated to open by the end of 2011, each in an international market, including China, India, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Columbia, Panama, and Costa Rica.

The fastest-growing market for Aloft is Asia Pacific, which accounts for 12 of the 27 hotels in the brand’s current development pipeline. By the end of 2013, Aloft will have opened six additional new properties across China, including hotels in Yancheng, Haiyang, and Guangzhou, southern China’s largest city. In India, the brand will have four hotels by the end of 2011. The brand’s current Indian portfolio of three hotels will multiply to include the fast-growing urban hubs of Chandigarh and Bengaluru.

From the floors of the Americas Lodging Investment Summit in San Diego, Advaya Hospitality unveiled a global lifestyle hotel brand today to an audience of industry insiders.

The brand, MODO Hotel, will make its debut in major markets around the world, starting with a minimum of five properties in India and another five in Brazil. Advaya also is in the early stages of establishing a fund to acquire strategic assets and build new hotels, targeting major U.S. markets like New York, Kansas City and Miami.

MODO presents a new take on hospitality that’s stylish, affordable and musically inspired. The brand will feature a striking urban, Bauhaus loft design. With its vast collection of vinyl records, CDs and MP3 content, MODO will showcase independent artists around the globe, promising a unique and entertaining travel experience.

Full-service MODO hotels will house 100 or more rooms, a lively restaurant-lounge,courtyard, pool, meeting and event space, library, retail shop and gym. Nightly rates will be in sync with today’s value-conscious travelers and the local markets. In the U.S., rates at full-service properties are targeted to range from $90 – $150 per night with the exception of some larger gateway cities. Additionally, a line of budget lifestyle lodgings will launch in international markets this year, creating a new niche of budget lifestyle hotels.

During the next three years, MODO will roll out in major metropolitan markets in Brazil. Five to ten 150-room hotels will be strategically located in the fastest growing cities of Sao Paulo, Campinas, Curitiba, Vitoria and Manaus. MODO in Brazil will be developed by the newly formed ABR Brazil LLC, a joint venture between MODO and BridgeRock Capital Management LLC.

Additionally, during the second half of this year, a MODO sister brand will premier in India, creating a new market niche of budget lifestyle hotels. Over the next three years, a minimum of five budget lifestyle hotels will launch in India under the MODO sister brand. The 60- to 80-room lodgings will have limited food and beverage offerings and small meeting rooms. They will be located in the cities of Chennai, Tuticorin, Kakinada, Vizag and Vellore.

Building costs for a full-service MODO hotel will be approximately $110,000 per key, including average land cost, with variations in major gateway cities. “That’s at least 20 percent less than those for other hotels in the same class,” saysJohn Russell, CEO for MODO and Advaya.

Franchising is slated to begin later this year. Additional expansion is planned through a combination of acquisitions, new development and conversions of existing properties. Among the target countries are China, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka.

Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the second largest independent boutique hotel company in the country, has entered into a strategic capital partnership with Geolo Capital, the private equity investment arm of the John A. Pritzker family. Geolo Capital will take a majority stake in Joie de Vivre’s business and provide capital to fund the boutique hotel brand’s expansion outside of California.

As part of the transaction, Geolo Capital has established an investment fund with the objective of acquiring $300 million to $500 million of hospitality assets over the next five years. Geolo plans to double Joie de Vivre’s revenues and grow the number of managed properties over that time period from the current 33 in California to approximately 50 throughout the U.S., adding hotels and resorts in key gateway cities and resort markets through new third party management agreements, joint ventures, and acquisitions.

Under the agreement, John Pritzker, Geolo’s founding partner and director and a 25-year veteran of the hospitality industry, will become chairman of the company. Chip Conley, Joie de Vivre’s founder and CEO, will retain a significant ownership interest in Joie de Vivre and remain actively involved as CEO.

The partnership with Joie de Vivre gives Geolo Capital, which specializes in hospitality investments, a branded platform to both acquire and manage additional hotels and resorts. Last year the company acquired Carmel Valley Ranch, an iconic resort property on 400 acres of land in the lush Carmel Valley. The Ranch will join the Joie de Vivre Hotels collection this year as part of its luxury portfolio, which includes Joie de Vivre’s flagship property, Hotel Vitale in San Francisco.

“As soon as we purchased Carmel Valley Ranch I knew I wanted to replicate its magic and create an authentic lifestyle and resort brand that was experience-driven for customers and employees,” said Pritzker. “Then I found out that brand already existed – it’s called Joie de Vivre.”

Geolo sees tremendous opportunity for the Joie de Vivre brand across the three- to five-star spectrum, especially in the three-and-a-half star space where the boutique hotelier is “the best in the business,” said Pritzker.

Joie de Vivre is known for taking bland box or challenged hotels and transforming them into unique boutique properties that are an antidote to the vanilla experience offered by major chains. Each Joie de Vivre hotel is an original that reflects its location through creative design and amenities. The San Francisco-based company has created more three- and three-and-a-half star boutique hotels than any other hotel company.

“After 23 years of being a California hotel brand, we felt the time was right for Joie de Vivre to move outside the state. There are so many neglected gems and tired hotels that could be turned into appealing, affordable boutique properties,” said Conley. “With Geolo as our partner, we will be able to take advantage of the wave of hotel deals that are imminent, and we will have sufficient working capital to invest in our infrastructure to support our growth.”

Working with Joie de Vivre’s development team on the company’s strategic growth will be Geolo partner Gary Beasley, who spent seven years with KSL Resorts, where he was instrumental in acquiring and integrating over $800 million of hotel and resort properties.

“Our objective is to take advantage of what we believe will be one of the most attractive hotel buying cycles in a generation, and in the process create great hotels that offer both outstanding guest experiences as well as outstanding economic returns,” Beasley said. ” We look forward to working with Chip and the rest of the Joie de Vivre team to continue to build what we believe is one of the most dynamic and promising hospitality platforms around.”