Club, Spa, Resort, and Healthcare Marketing

MediaPost Publications Study Finds Affluents Believe Recovery Is Here

Despite all kinds of mixed economic tea leaves, a new study of consumer perception from Deloitte indicates that most Americans do believe financial recovery has arrived, and that view is especially strong among affluents.”Consumer confidence is really strengthening,” Scott Erickson, a partner in the firm's retail practice, tells Marketing Daily. “And people with higher incomes are more likely to believe we are in recovery.”About 63% of those in the survey say they are planning to spend the same or more with retailers this year than they did in 2009; 40% say they are more upbeat about the economy. And while 55% of consumers think the economy is in recovery, 65% of those who make more than $100,000 a year believe that is true.The survey also reported a marked improvement in people's perceptions of their household status, with 64% reporting that their financial status is either better or the same compared with a year ago. When asked that question just before the holidays, only 56% thought their household financial situation was the same or better.

via MediaPost Publications Study Finds Affluents Believe Recovery Is Here 05/24/2010.

At High-End Hotels, Business Is Looking Up

IN the depths of the recession, a cartoon made the rounds in the executive offices of the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain. “It showed a guy trying to change the name on the sign above his hotel from Ritz to Fritz,” said Simon Cooper, the president of Ritz-Carlton, which is the top luxury brand of Marriott International.

While the recession cut deeply into business and leisure travel at all hotels, luxury hotels were hit the hardest. It didn’t help the Ritz that its name was a symbol of the rich life.Now, however, that segment is reporting the strongest recovery. For the week that ended May 1, the luxury hotel niche reported the sharpest increases in both occupancy and revenue per available room of any segment in the domestic hotel industry, according to Smith Travel Research, the hotel financial analysis firm.

via On the Road – At High-End Hotels, Business Is Looking Up – NYTimes.com.

Faltering Balsam Mountain Preserve makes comeback

In an unprecedented turn of events in today’s economic times, an upscale development on the Haywood/Jackson county line that hit rocky financial waters has made a comeback. After a six-month hiatus, Balsam Mountain Preserve has resumed club operations and marketing and sales of its remaining 120 home sites.

Balsam Mountain Preserve’s former owner, Chaffin/Light Associates, defaulted on bank loans last year and Vestlyn BMP LLC foreclosed on the property. Now, just six months from the beginning of foreclosure to gaining control, Vestlyn has stepped in and is moving forward with selling the remaining 120 lots on the property. The company has reopened the property’s facilities, including the award winning Arnold Palmer Signature golf course.

The entity is represented by TriLyn LLC, an institutional real estate investment company that had held the debt for the development since 2005. The development is debt-free since the original lender is now the equity owner.

“I think people are pleased with what has happened,” said Bruce Fine, VP of sales and marketing at Balsam, of the 170 owners in the preserve. “What happened here demonstrates both the commitment of the new owner and the passion that Balsam’s property owners have for the community.”

Last year, amenities at the development, including golf course, fitness center, pool, activity center and nature center, were either closed or scaled back as financial details were sorted out. Only 20 employees were retained through the winter of the original 90 employed.

Like other communities in Western North Carolina, Balsam Mountain Preserve was a victim of the recent economic downturn, Fine said. The development had no debt until 2005, when the original developer started frontloading amenities at a time that homeowners in the community were low, Fine said. The developer got behind, went to the open market in search of money and then the market soured.

“TriLyn ended up basically taking the reins through the foreclosure,” he said. “Balsam now has the advantage of stable, institutional ownership and no debt. We are moving quickly to complete this extraordinary property and as the economy continues to recover we expect to see increased demand of our homesites.”

“We’ve had two closings this month, five lots are under reservation, and we’re rehiring people we laid off,” Fine said. Forty-four employees are now on staff, 11 of whom were recently called back, Fine said, and there are plans to hire another dozen or so to bring employee numbers back to full force.

via Faltering Balsam Mountain Preserve makes comeback.

At High-End Hotels, Business Is Looking Up

IN the depths of the recession, a cartoon made the rounds in the executive offices of the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain. “It showed a guy trying to change the name on the sign above his hotel from Ritz to Fritz,” said Simon Cooper, the president of Ritz-Carlton, which is the top luxury brand of Marriott International.

While the recession cut deeply into business and leisure travel at all hotels, luxury hotels were hit the hardest. It didn’t help the Ritz that its name was a symbol of the rich life.

Now, however, that segment is reporting the strongest recovery. For the week that ended May 1, the luxury hotel niche reported the sharpest increases in both occupancy and revenue per available room of any segment in the domestic hotel industry, according to Smith Travel Research, the hotel financial analysis firm.

“The recovery is stronger in luxury than in any other segment of the hotel business,” Mr. Cooper said. “This time last year we were taking the toughest hit, primarily because of the cancellations of groups after AIG and all the media attention that created.” Everybody, he added, “was being very circumspect about how they spent their money, and where.”

The so-called A.I.G. effect crushed many areas of travel spending after reports that the insurance giant American International Group ran up a bill of about $440,000 on an incentives retreat in October 2008 at the St Regis Monarch Beach, a Southern California resort hotel, shortly after the company accepted an $85 billion federal bailout. The bill for the retreat included $23,000 for spa treatments and $16,000 for the presidential suite.

via On the Road – At High-End Hotels, Business Is Looking Up – NYTimes.com.

Land deal worth millions

To keep his agricultural operation diversified, rancher Berryman “Buster” Longino has grown many crops over the years, from oranges to watermelons, grapefruit and sod.The one thing Longino never wanted to see sprout on his 3,890-acre property in eastern Sarasota County — purchased by his grandfather in 1934 — was a housing development.On Tuesday, Longino sold the rights to develop the land to Sarasota County and the state through a $14.6 million conservation easement that completes a two-part blockbuster land preservation deal.Along with a deal approved this month to purchase the neighboring Walton Ranch, the Longino easement helps connect nearby conservation areas into an unbroken ribbon of preserved land over 106,000 acres between the Myakka River and the Peace River.The two deals will cost about $38 million, with most of the money coming from the state’s Florida Forever program through the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

via Land deal worth millions | HeraldTribune.com.

Eight Signs Of A Real Estate Rebound

Is the housing market on the verge of recovering? Is it recovering already? If you’re not sure whether you believe the economists and pundits who think they can see the future, here are some tools that will help you make up your own mind.Pending Home SalesAccording to the National Association of Realtors, pending home sales, or the number of homes that are under contract and in the process of selling, rose by 8.2% in February the most recent month for which data are available. The index is also an encouraging 17.3% over what it was a year ago.

Pending home sales are considered a leading indicator, meaning that they can forecast the direction the economy is headed. Leading indicators cannot truly predict the future, though, so they should be taken with a grain of salt.

The increase in pending home sales could be less indicative of a genuine improvement in the housing market, however, and more indicative of the pending expiration of the home buyer tax credit, which requires homes to be under contract by April 30.

Housing Starts
Housing starts are an important leading indicator of not just the housing market, but the economy as a whole, because people are more likely to start new residential construction projects when things are looking good. Housing starts don’t look promising right now–the U.S. Census Bureau reported that privately owned housing starts in February were 5.9% below January and 0.2% above February 2009.

New- and Existing-Home Sales
New-home sales reached a record low in February with 308,000 sales, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). In 2005 1,283,000 new homes were sold per month on average. The good news is that new home sales increased by 20.8% in the West, one of the regions hardest hit by the housing crisis.

More good news comes from statistics on existing-home sales. About 5 million existing homes were sold in February, up from about 4.7 million a year ago.

Home Inventory
Home inventory is another leading economic indicator. A greater supply of homes for sale indicates weak market conditions. The NAHB also reported that as of February 2010, there were 236,000 new homes, or 9.2 months’ supply, on the market, the worst number since May 2009. There was also 8.6 months’ supply of existing homes on the market, the worst number since August 2009. However, these numbers are better than those from a year ago, when the supply was 11.1 months for new homes and 9.7 months for existing homes.

Housing Affordability
The National Association of Realtors reports that in February 2010, the median price of an existing home in the United States was $164,300 and the average mortgage rate was 4.99%. With median family income at $60,498, a family’s housing payment would only be 14.2% of its income, well below the 25% cap many financial experts recommend for keeping the monthly budget under control.

Compare these figures to 2007 averages, when a house cost $217,900, mortgage rates were 6.52% and median incomes were about the same at $61,173. While falling home prices aren’t good, improved home affordability could help the recovery by putting home ownership within reach for more families, especially the first-time buyers, who have historically helped end housing slumps.

However, credit is still difficult to obtain, and unlike investors, most families can’t buy homes without a mortgage. What’s more, despite how far prices have fallen, there are still plenty of people in high-cost-of-living cities who can’t afford to buy anything.

Mortgage Applications
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) issues its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey that reports on the number of people applying to borrow money to buy a house. For the week ending April 9, mortgage applications declined by 9.6% over the previous week. The four-week moving average, which is helpful in smoothing out the ups and downs of the weekly figures, was down 6.2%. The MBA stated that an increase in mortgage insurance premiums for FHA loans, which are attractive to buyers because of their low down payment requirements, may have contributed to this decline.

Mortgage Interest Rates
For the week ending April 9, the MBA reported that the average contract rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 5.17%. Mortgage rates have been at historic lows for months, wavering between 5% and 6%. Low mortgage rates help entice buyers, but they can’t fix a bad housing market on their own. The Consumer Confidence Index, a survey of how optimistic or pessimistic people feel about the economy, has been up and down in 2010, and consumers still feel pessimistic about the job market. The thousands of Americans who are unemployed couldn’t get a mortgage even if rates were 1%.

Real Estate Mutual Funds
According to Morningstar, real estate mutual funds returned 9.4% in the first quarter of 2010, one of the highest return of any mutual fund category. Over the last year, they have also led all mutual funds with a gain of 105.3%. Shares of Vanguard’s REIT ETF (VNQ), which invests in a wide range of real estate companies, gained 10% in the first quarter of 2010 and over 69% in the last year. These returns show investor confidence in the overall real estate market.

REITs are not limited to investing in the residential housing market, however; VNQ’s largest holdings, for example, include Simon Property Group, which owns numerous shopping malls; Vornado Realty Trust, the owner of many office and retail buildings; and Public Storage, a well-known storage unit rental company.

Mixed Signals
Major housing market indicators currently provide mixed signals about how the housing market is doing. High unemployment rates, the continued difficulty of obtaining credit and the pending expiration of the home buyer tax credit make it hard to tell where the housing market is headed at the moment. Keep an eye on these indicators and wait for clear and consistent signals to emerge before you consider the housing market to truly be recovering.

via Eight Signs Of A Real Estate Rebound – Forbes.com.

Daniel Goldstein, Last Atlantic Yards Holdout, Agrees To Sell For $3 Million

The last holdout in a long-running land dispute with the developer of an NBA arena agreed Wednesday to sell his home on the site for $2.4 million more than he paid for it a few years ago.Daniel Goldstein and his family agreed to leave their Brooklyn condo by May 7 in a settlement in court with developer Forest City Ratner Cos.Goldstein said he bought the condo for $590,000 in 2003 and will receive $3 million for it. The sale figure was first reported in The New York Times.Goldstein founded Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, the Atlantic Yards development project’s most vocal critic. Under the terms of the settlement he can no longer be the spokesman for the group, but he said he will still be involved with it.”The fight and the opposition to the project will continue,” he said.Seven other families living in the footprint of the 22-acre Atlantic Yards development project agreed Tuesday to leave.

via Daniel Goldstein, Last Atlantic Yards Holdout, Agrees To Sell For $3 Million.

Caribbean Resort Development Scene – Flat or Recovering?

With two weeks to go before the annual Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference in San Juan, it may still seem optimistic to believe that the Caribbean resort development scene has already bottomed out and is now in recovery mode, but that is the belief of Robert MacLellan who has a long and specialist track record in the region. MacLellan is Managing Director of MacLellan & Associates, the largest Caribbean based hospitality consultancy.

In explaining the reasons for his view, MacLellan said, “While much of our work in 2009 consisted of appraisals on stalled projects, expert witness assignments involving project legal disputes and advising banks on exit strategies for distressed projects, 2010 has turned the corner and the majority of our assignments are now development consultancy oriented.” While he would not divulge confidential details, he confirmed that the company was currently working on six resort projects and that he expected the majority of these to break ground this year. According to MacLellan, two of the projects are located on Dominican Republic’s North Coast, two in the Grenadines, one in Dominica and one in Anguilla – some will be operated under management contract by international boutique brands. He went on to say that in order to cope with the increased workload the company had expanded the consultancy team to fourteen persons and now includes a project finance expert, a specialist hospitality industry lawyer and a marina consultant.

MacLellan compared the impact on the Caribbean of the recent world-wide recession to the region’s challenges in the aftermath of the 9/11 disaster and said, “We had to modify the business models for mixed use resort development in 2001 to ensure that projects could proceed then and we have made similar changes now to allow projects to progress. Marketing and construction phasing is now more sensitive, real estate marketing must reach a wider range of potential target countries in a cost effective manner and project financing requires higher levels of both equity and debt than structures employed during the boom years.”

Commenting on present difficulties, MacLellan stated that many of the semi completed but distressed projects in the Caribbean could be mired in legal disputes for periods of up to five years, based on past history in the region, and that real estate sales on these projects were obviously blighted in those circumstances until the courts ruled on all outstanding matters. He also highlighted challenges in producing accurate valuations in current market conditions, saying, “Appraisals of existing properties and development sites across the Caribbean have always been challenging, given the shortage of accurate deal data for comparable transactions, but today specialist expertise in the hospitality industry and in depth regional knowledge is an absolute prerequisite to even commence the exercise with hopes of a meaningful result.”

via Caribbean Resort Development Scene – Flat or Recovering?.

Wynn opens latest Macau hotel, plans new resort

Billionaire Steve Wynn opened his latest hotel and casino in Macau Wednesday and said he aims to start building a massive new resort in the Chinese gambling mecca next year.

Wynn said the project — to be located in the territory’s Cotai area, a piece of reclaimed land seen as the next great hope for global gambling — would likely feature less than 2,000 rooms, about 400 tables, restaurants, shopping and meeting rooms set across some 50 acres of lush gardens and landscape.

Next to the towering interconnected hotel-casino projects in Cotai from competitors like Las Vegas Sands, Wynn’s planned resort would stand in marked contrast.

“What makes people happy and what don’t they get in China? …. What you don’t get in China is space, and the heart of a resort is space — gardens, places to gambol, not gamble,” Wynn, chief executive of Las Vegas-based Wynn resorts, said in an interview in Macau.

“I know what I want to do on the 51 acres, not build four hotels or six hotels or any of that foolishness,” he said. “I am going to build one hotel of modest size with gardens and extended space wherever you are.”

Wynn revealed details of the project ahead of the unveiling of the $600 million Encore at Wynn Macau. The only major project to open in the booming southern Chinese territory this year, Encore is geared toward high-end tourists and gamblers.

via The Associated Press: Wynn opens latest Macau hotel, plans new resort.

Motorola phones and accessories

I just happened to run across this site – attempting to  get some cell phone information. Here is how NOT to do a website. This has to be one of the worst commercial sites I have ever attempted to work with… unresponsive… loading, loading, loading…. unable to leave comments, apache errors… HellO? Anybody monitor this place?  Wow… I hope the phones work better than this. Just lost a sale… poof.

Motorola phones and accessories – Motorola USA.