Investments in the hotel sector in the first six months of this year reached 1.094 billion euro, which exceeded the level of the entire previous year – 955 million euros. It is also one of the best semi-annual records in the last 15 years.
"Investments have intensified with extraordinary force," say Colliers experts, who predict "very positive" prospects for the second half of the year, with current operations worth about 2 billion euros, of which about half are already agreed or very advanced transactions.
"This seems to be related to the extraordinary slowdown in investment that occurred in 2020 as a result of the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism sector," said the company, which provides consulting services and investment management in the real sector.
As a result of the purchase of existing hotels, buildings for conversion into hotels and land plots for the construction of hotels, a total of 52 objects (7,333 rooms) were closed.
The indicators of Spain are in contrast with those of neighboring countries, such as Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, where the level of investment is still at a minimum level.
The reason why Spain is one of the countries of maximum investment interest is that international investors believe that the hotel business sector will recover much faster than the business market.
According to Laura Hernando, general manager of the Colliers Hotels division, there was a combination of various elements in the Spanish hotel investment market that formed a "perfect storm".
To the historically high level of available liquidity, a lot of pressure from investment funds has been added. "After 15 months of "drought", as well as the need for many hotel chains to sell assets to cover the significant liquidity deficit caused by the consequences of the pandemic, " Hernando explained.
In addition, all this is happening in conditions of limited availability of financing for acquisitions. This suggests that investment activity will increase significantly when the inflow of financing begins.