Hotels & Accommodations

Greece’s National Bank, owner of the Astir Hotel Company, has placed the three-hotel group on the Athens Stock Exchange. The initial public offering last month places 14.7 billion drachmas within the group’s coffers. This cash will be used mostly to initiate a five-year 14-billion-drachma investment program.

Up-market Greek hotels for business travelers are on the average the fourth most expensive in the world. And it looks like prices are going even higher. According to a study by BTI UK Hogg Robinson, which was published by the Hellenic Travel and Tourism Agents’ Association, last year Greek hotels moved from being the seventh most expensive in the world to the fourth most expensive for business travelers.

One of the biggest and best-known first-class resort complex in Greece, the 472-room Colossos Beach of Rodos, is now in the hands of Louis Hotels. Furthermore, with its purchase of 68.3% of Colossos, Louis gets 25,000 square meters of beach property.

The biggest conference venue within the City of Athens, the ballroom at the Athenaeum InterContinental hotel, is undergoing extensive renovations worth 950 million drachmas.

Athens hoteliers have agreed to set aside 80 percent of the capital’s beds to accommodate the Olympic family during the 2004 Games. At a meeting last month with Development Minister Nikos Christodoulakis and Athens 2004 Organizing Committee Chairwoman Yianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the president of the Athens Hoteliers’ Association, Spiros Divanis, said hoteliers would sign a contract to that effect before the end of July.

The Hyatt group of Thessaloniki, which has acquired a majority of shares in the Grande Bretagne hotel, and the Latsis-owned Eurobank are said to be close to finalizing an agreement to merge the classic Athens-center hotel and the defunct King George Hotel that sits empty next to it.

Upon completion of its extensive and even radical renovations, at a cost of some five billion drachmas, the Athens Chandris Hotel assumes a new identity. The deluxe cosmopolitan unit heretofore becomes the Metropolitan Hotel. “We at Chandris Hotels and Resorts thought it only fitting that, in reflection of our efforts, a new name be found to match our new image,” says the hotel’s sales manager, Spyros Maganiotis.

Through share purchases on the Athens Stock Exchange, the Hyatt Regency of Thessaloniki purchased at least 17% of the Athens-central deluxe hotel Grand Bretagne. Hyatt said it would acquire additional shares if the open-market price is reasonable.

A partial deal between the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee and the capital’s hoteliers’ union on accommodation for Olympic Games’ visitors to Athens was reached last month with the assistance of Development Minister Nikos Christodoulakis.

Greece’s Hyatt Regency aims to expand its hotel-casino business in the immediate future to countries outside of Greece, says the company’s chairman, Georgos Galanakis. He did not, however, exclude expansion in Greece and said the company would utilize every business opportunity available. For 1999, the company posted net profit before taxes of 11.3 billion drachmas, which was 79.4% up over the year before. Revenue for the year for the hotel and casino reached 44.3 billion drachmas, or 22.3% more than the year before. For this year, the company expects revenue of 49.4 billion drachmas and a net profit before taxes of around 14 billion drachmas.