Around 1.0 billion euros were invested in German hotel properties in the first half of 2021, according to international real estate consultancy firm Cushman & Wakefield (C&W). This represents a decline of around 24 % compared to a year previously (H1 2020: €1.4 billion) and of around 31 % in relation to the pre-pandemic year 2019. Transaction activity was balanced in both quarters, at around €500 million each. Individual property transactions contributed about 80 % of the total.
The largest transactions in the second quarter included:
- The sale of a hotel tower at Mailänder Platz in Stuttgart, with Adina and Premier Inn as hotel tenants, to Union Investment for around €137m. The hotel development project with a total of 429 rooms and retail space on the ground floor has around 30,000 sq m of gross floor space and is scheduled for completion at the end of 2021. The seller was the developer Strabag Real Estate.
- Two Maritim Hotels on Timmendorfer Strand and in Gelsenkirchen with a total of 411 rooms acquired by the Heilbronn Plaza Hotel Group. In the course of the Covid pandemic, Maritim was forced to sell some individual hotels from its portfolio.
- The sale of the luxury hotel Europäischer Hof with 120 rooms in Baden-Baden to a German pension fund. The operator and tenant of the property will be Deutsche Hospitality. The hotel was sold out of insolvency and is currently being extensively renovated.
- The sale of an Atlantic Hotel as part of the high-rise development Messeeingang Süd in Frankfurt to Sparda-Bank Hessen. The hotel is scheduled to open in 2025 and will have 374 rooms. The seller was the Gustav Zech Foundation.
German hotel buyers dominated, contributing 71% of the transaction volume. French and Israeli hotel buyers were the most active foreign investors with a total volume of 214 million euros, spread over four transactions. Institutional investors were the dominant buyer group and responsible for around 60 % of investment volume, followed by private individuals / family offices (19 %), real estate companies (10 %), hotel operators (8 %) and developers (3 %).
"Even if the transaction volume still lags far behind previous years, a more positive basic mood is perceptible in the hotel investment market. In the second quarter, the new legal situation regarding share deals also contributed to the fact that some sellers decided to sell at short notice. In addition, it is apparent that the bottleneck continues to be financing, so that almost exclusively buyers with sufficient equity capital have a chance to participate. Due to the general lack of product, only a low level of price pressure is currently being seen in the transactions," comments Stefan Giesemann, Head of Hospitality Germany & Austria at Cushman & Wakefield.
C&W expects activity to increase further, especially in the final quarter of the year, depending on further developments in the Covid-19 pandemic. Core product as well as opportunistic investments and hotels and unfinished hotel development projects with conversion potential will be particularly sought after.
