Smaller hotel take advantage of opportunities at low tide

São Paulo-While the market recovers, hotel national administrators of small and medium businesses leverage to expand their operations. The challenge now will be able to keep the pace of expansion amid an unstable scenario with reduced demand, high costs and a drop in average daily practiced in the country.
"It''s a question of relationship. The investor profile changed and small won space, because for a long time the great they didn''t put it, "the General Manager of Nobile Suites Congonhas, Renata Balakrishnan, about the opportunities of converting banners.
In the opinion of the Executive, the investor sprayed is increasingly informed and has required of administrators increased transparency and attention. "Today it''s not enough to be. This is an opportunity for smaller companies and already see great concerned with movement, "believes Renata.
Just in Sao Paulo, the Nobile conducted six conversions between 2016 and 2017. "And we have obtained good results. The Nobile Suites Congonhas [the first of the network in the capital] did a year of operations and we can go from 40% to 70% occupancy. Last month we were 75%, "he says. In 2017, the network announced conversions in Petrolina (PE), São João do Meriti (RJ), Rio Branco (AC), Aracaju (SE) and Recife (PE), before belonging to networks such as Best Western, AccorHotels and Atlantica Hotels.
According to the founder and President of Nobile, Robert Bertino, the goal for the year is to reach 28% growth in revenue and 18% increase in the supply of apartments. Currently are 36 hotels on the network. "The new ventures already opened and to open in 2017 total investments of R $180,000,000 with third-party features," says Bertino.
In the case of Vert Hotels, which closed 2016 with 14 units, the goal is to reach between 20 and 22 enterprises (between administered and franchisees) in the portfolio. "The big focus will be the city of São Paulo and the interior of the State. In three years we want 12 hotels in the region, "explains the Director of sales and marketing at Vert Hotels, Bruno Guimaraes. The calculation is that the new ventures require a sum of R $141,000,000 with third-party resources. Currently, the network operates own brands and licensed like the Ramada.
Even with average occupancy rates between 55% and 66%, considered low for the hospitality, the Executive points out that the network is preparing for the resumption of the country. A strategy that the network will use to increase demand is the newly announced partnership with argentina administrator Aadesa Hotels. The idea of this contract is to take advantage of the flow of passengers between Argentina and Brazil in both brands. "We will work on three fronts: the first was to connect the sites, then work visual communication in hotels and finally use the local sales force. If a customer wants to go to Argentina, my team can negotiate the hotels of Aadesa. "
Currently, the contract is just commercial, but according to Guimaraes, the company did not rule out the possibility of a shareholding company in the future.
Other issues that can help in the resumption of demand, he said, are the change in labor laws and the regulation of casinos. "We want workers '' rights to be respected, but we need the rules of outsourcing in tourism to not only work with linear labor and get more staff at peak hours", analyzes. The Casino business, it highlights the activity comes in line with the new hospitality investment in entertainment. "We believe that the hotel is not only a room and coming up with this," analyzes.
Market analysis
According to the Managing Director of the consultancy HotelInvest, Diogo Canteras, today, with the fall in profitability of hotels, there is a greater demand for conversions. However, the Commission points out that the financial situation of the hotel managers were also in '' survival mode '' with the crisis. It is therefore necessary that big and small watch out for indebtedness. "Expand is opportunity of the moment, but you have to have a partner capitalized that be prejudice in this scenario," he explains.
According to him, the demand had a fall of more than 20% in comparison to 2012, which left the profitability of administrator to a third of what it was in periods prior to the crisis. "Increasing the number of hotels with the same number of staff to meet can generate a very bad situation," he says.
An opportunity, cited by him, is consolidating market. "At this point, who buy or join with other and consolidate takes the opportunity [for expansion], because that way you get breath and scale," says Canteeas. About putting this theory into practice, he mentions that several networks have already rehearsed the opportunity but still nothing was '' closed ''.
For him, the resumption of the market directly depends on the economic growth of the country. "The occupation is recovering more quickly, but the resumption of growth [occupation, income and average daily] might take a little longer," he says. The projection is that the market back to levels of profitability of 2012 from 2022.