Israeli hotel companies move to Europe

The Israeli hotel industry is flexing its muscles, and Fattal Hotels is leading the push, according to sources.

Fattal turned heads last December when the company—together with Swedish firm Pandox—bought a 37-hotel portfolio for £800 million ($1.1 billion) from U.S. private equity firm Lone Star. A total of 36 of the assets comprise the entire Jurys Inn brand. Fattal now owns the portfolio’s operations platform and will manage all Jurys Inn hotels via long-term lease agreements.

Since the Jurys Inn acquisition, Fattal has been working on another deal. On 25 February, parent company Fattal Hotel Management placed 11.5% of the company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. At press time, the market capitalization of its publicly traded shares—not the entire company’s value—is 5.3 billion Israeli shekels ($1.5 billion).

Joseph Fischer, CEO of Israeli business consultancy Vision Hospitality, said Israeli shareholders often have been lukewarm about hotel ownership.

“Until now, shareholder attitudes have not been positive,” he said. “They do not really like hospitality stock, as (the Israeli tourism industry has) seen quite a fluctuation in performance, be that from an Intifada, a missile out of Lebanon, problems with Iran, peaks and troughs, banks not so keen to give money for new development and not much stock coming into the market.”

Fischer said it makes sense why Fattal is taking some part of the company public, especially for David Fattal, chairman and CEO of Fattal Hotels, a company he founded almost 20 years ago.

“Currently, 83% of Fattal is in holding group, with 18.5% owned by Israeli’s largest insurance company, Migdal Insurance & Financial Holdings,” Fischer said. “(David Fattal) will use the money to pay his loans.”

Speaking of the Jurys Inn deal, Fattal said, “it is a big expansion for us. We really looked for the ability to penetrate our strength in the (United Kingdom) and Ireland market. We continue to expand, with the idea of having several hotels in the strong cities.”

But that expansion does not yet include the Americas, Fattal said.

“For now it is Europe and Israel; we are in 17 countries and very focused on city and airport hotels,” Fattal said, adding that the company’s Leonardo brand is its main hotel brand in Europe.

As for the move to the stock market, Fattal said, “the idea of this is to have more penetration in the bond market. Plus, with a higher rating comes lower interest rates.”