Hotel Sales Report - you can't give them away

Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels has issued a report that in H1 2008 $13.9 billion worth of hotels were bought and sold. That might be a big sounding number but it is down 76% on the same period in 2007. The declines are most pronounced in the Americas - which saw an 81% decline. Ehotelier.com has the whole story and some graphs.

Another interesting stat from the report - 84% of the transactions were for hotels of value less than$100mm and only one at greater than $1billion. It may be that this trend is unrelated to travel market decline and more related to the credit crunch and resulting inability of institutions to raise the debt that is needed to finance large hotel acquisitions. I hope that is the answer and not that this story along with the RevPAR story are indicating that the market is going south.

thanks to the Chris & Sandra Marshall on flickr for the photo