Marriott opens tallest <b>hotel</b> in New York as demand rises <b>...</b> - Hotel in Sarawak Blog |
| Marriott opens tallest <b>hotel</b> in New York as demand rises <b>...</b> Posted: 11 Jan 2014 08:03 AM PST Marriott International Inc, the owner of brands including Ritz-Carlton and Renaissance Hotels, is opening the tallest US hotel building in New York as tourism in the city reaches a record. The 68-story tower at the corner of Broadway and 54th Street houses a 378-room Courtyard hotel and a 261-room Residence Inn. The property reaches almost 753 feet (230 meters), making it the tallest hotel without accompanying offices or residential space in the US, said Kathleen Duffy, a spokeswoman for Marriott's hotels in New York City. The two-tower Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, a mixed-use development with a Mandarin Oriental hotel, is 750 feet. "I'm certain either one of them would have done fine on their own," Marriott chief executive officer Arne Sorenson said at the opening of the two hotels. "But here you've got a great location, an A-plus location, with two distinct products that will appeal to two distinct kinds of stays." Marriott is opening the property as hotel demand in the city soars. New York had a record 54.3 million tourists last year, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on December 10. The city is likely to have 55 million visitors in 2014, said Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. Marriott has about 100 hotels across the US that offer as many as three Marriott brands within one property, and the company is looking for more opportunities to pursue such projects, Sorenson said. Franchise agreement The New York hotel property, which began serving travelers on December 29 and had its official opening, cost US$320 million to build. It's operated under a franchise agreement between Marriott and builder Granite Broadway Development LLC, the property's owner, and is managed by Arlington, Virginia-based Interstate Hotels & Resorts Inc. Granite bought the land in 2001 for US$32 million, when it had three "non-distinct buildings" with a restaurant, a pornography shop and a clothing store, chief executive officer (CEO) Harry Gross said at today's event. New York-based Granite took several years to decide to build a hotel, after also considering a mixed-use project with a hotel at the bottom and residential condominiums in upper floors. "But at the time, the condominium market went to pieces," Gross said. "So therefore, seeing that, two hotels would make sense, especially if they catered to two different segments." Highest Occupancies Hotel occupancies of 85 per cent and average room rates of US$254.32 last year through November in New York were the highest among the top 25 US markets, according to data from Hendersonville, Tennessee-based STR. Occupancies were at a 13-year high in the city, according to the research company. Occupancies at New York City hotels probably will decline slightly in the next two years as more hotels open, increasing competition, STR said. About 12,000 rooms will be added in 2014, bringing the city's total to about 120,000 and causing occupancies to drop to 83 per cent this year, the firm said. Demand from events like the National Football League's Super Bowl on February 2 and an influx of business and leisure travelers throughout the year will help fill rooms, Duffy said. "There is plenty of demand in this city for all of us," she said. Edition sale Marriott's other properties in New York include an Edition hotel, part of a luxury boutique brand it's been developing with hotelier Ian Schrager. The company in August announced the planned sale of the Manhattan development at Madison Square Park, expected to open in the first half of 2015, as well as an agreement to sell an Edition project in Miami Beach and a London location that opened in September. The company said today that it sold the London Edition, and the total purchase price for all three properties is expected to be about US$815 million. The Marriott property opening today will have a shared entrance and lobby on 54th Street for both its hotels. Courtyard rooms are on floors six through 33, and Residence Inn rooms are the 37th through 65th stories, with public areas on the levels in between the two hotels. The Courtyard hotel will target leisure and business travelers, while the Residence Inn rooms are geared toward longer-term customers, Duffy said. — Bloomberg  To enable your comment to be published, please refrain from vulgar language, insidious, seditious or slanderous remarks. This includes vulgar user names.  |
| <b>Hotel</b> di <b>kuching</b> - Come <b>Sarawak</b> - Come - Blogger Posted: 03 Jan 2014 07:19 PM PST  This post is also available in: Iban, Malay  1/2 million ringgit price tags on CMS built homes in Bandar Samariang The Taib family company CMS proudly boasts of its "vast land bank" in its annual reports and has started selling off chunks for tens of millions in Kuching. Commercial centres and grand housing estates are also being developed in two key areas, Bandar Samariang, where CMS has 5,200 acres, valued around half a billion ringgit, and of course on the Kuching Isthmus, where land is even more expensive. But, how did CMS acquire all this property and who has benefitted? Sarawak Report has acquired shocking information about the way Taib and his family members have profited from this land, which was forcibly taken (official term is 'alienated') from local people and state ownership. We did it to help the poor The story that the Chief Minister told from the start was that this was land that difficult and expensive to develop, but that his family company was kindly determined to provide housing for poor people. Back in 2001, he even made out that CMS was doing this supposed favour in Bandar Samariang entirely "for the people's benefit" for "not much profit", because other developers didn't want to get involved in such a loss-making venture!
Such a kind old fellow!  Chief Executive and key shareholder at the time, Taib brother Onn Mahmud Interestingly no mention has ever been made again of these poor soil conditions by CMS. This is probably, not least, because in every other country in the world, developing tropical peat soil has been banned, because of the severe environmental consequences. To gain a sense of the value of this land handed to CMS in the guise of helping the poor, consider the recent news that the company has decided to sell on a parcel of 500 acres for over RM45million to Sentoria Group to build a theme park. Suddenly, another developer has been found willing not only to take on the job of developing the land, but to pay big money for the plot. However, this time of course the money has gone to CMS, not the government or the people from whom the area was 'alienated'. At the time CMS got this land for free it was largely owned and run by Taib's brother Onn Mahmud, who shortly after passed on his shares to Taib's wife, with the remainder being largely in the hands of the Chief Minister's four children. No nepotism at all then! Sucking money out of pensions too  Robert Geneid, the Head of CMS Property Development and husband of Taib's sister Raziah Mahmud. But, of course, the Taibs didn't really want to invest their own money in this mission to assist the poor with 'quality low cost housing'. Far better to use their influence to encourage the government controlled Employee Provident Fund (EPF) to put in the money instead. After all, this fat milk cow has been used to pour vast sums of money into endless pet projects to benefit BN politicians, meaning public employees can look forward to far lower pensions, despite being forced to pay a quarter of their salaries into the obligatory savings fund controlled by the government. EPF therefore was dragged into a joint venture with CMS and the investment in the "low cost housing" in Bandar Samariang began. But, in fact, low cost housing was only ever planned to form a small part of the project from the very start. The original terms of agreement, as explained in CMS's own annual reports, made clear just 1/3 of the area was to be housing for the less well-off.  Housing for the poor? The rest of the huge site was to be developed as an ambitious commercial enterprise. CMS's 1997 Annual Report was certainly not bashful about the profit-driven nature of CMS's latest housing project or the ambitions of its new Property Development Division, headed by the new husband of Taib's sister Raziah, the Lebanese Australian, Robert Geneid. It also reveals that, thanks to Taib's ability to pull the strings, that the State Housing & Development Commission had already been tasked with buying whatever 'quality low cost housing' CMS Property produced on the site, ensuring a guaranteed profit.
So, in fact, a mere 4,000 units of the token low cost housing have been included in the first phase of the project, all promoted in the beginning in a blaze of positive publicity, before CMS moved speedily to the much more lucrative "medium cost" housing, where units are currently being sold for the very fancy prices of anything up to half a million ringgit!  Phase 1 – including 4,000 low cost housing units guaranteed to be purchased by the Housing Committee Of course, the fact that the state has ploughed in major infrastructure, in terms of roads and amenities into the area, has made the development potential of this project ever more lucrative. Yet, the Chief Minister is still justifying his handing of it all to his family in the name of charity for Kuching's poor!  Presiding over his family's vast profitable land venture. However, this mother of all land grabs from the Sarawak people is just the start of the story of how the Taib family set about enriching themselves from this project. In 'Phase 2′ of our investigation we will be looking at how individual members of the Taib inner family circle, set about using the massive housing project to develop profitable businesses for themselves, with disastrous consequences for the very poor people in whose name the Bandar Samariang land grab was executed.  "The new township boasts a myriad of vibrant features such as improved road connectivity between central and South Kuching" Borneo Post |
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