IHG to buy Fairmont, Raffles and Swissotel?

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• flyforfun says:

  21 Sep21 September 13:19

  I stayed recently at the Fairmont Lake Louise as part of the Rocky Mountaineer / The Canadian tour package. Got a shock when I saw the rack rate for a room! Glad it was “hidden” in my total tour package. We had the option to stay in other Fairmont hotels in Banff and Jasper, but they seemed out of town a bit compared to other ones.

  I have to say, while the lobby and public spaces are nice, and the lake view at Lake Louise is superb, the room itself was a let down. Small, efficient luxury would be a way to describe it. But the worse thing was the bed was lumpiest of all the hotels we stayed in while on tour. Didn’t get a good night’s sleep there which was disappointing.

  I joined Fairmont’s loyalty scheme as it gave you access to free wifi. I wonder if the points I got will be merged with IHG. By the time they are in a position to do so, my points would have expired!

  • Dave says:

    23 Sep23 September 03:49

    The Fairmont loyalty program doesn’t use points, therefore you don’t have any points to either expire or be merged with any successor program.

  • RICO says:

    23 Sep23 September 05:18

    Does anyone actually know someone who has paid the rack rate for a room. Ever?

    • Rob says:

      23 Sep23 September 08:58

      Technical terms here.

      If by rack rate you mean the rate posted on the wardroom door or behind reception, then very few people except late running business people.

      If you mean ‘best available rate’, ie the cancellable rate offered online, then I book them all the time because I usually need flexibility – and, as Avios flights are flexible, it would be stupid to wrap inflexible hotels around a reward flight. Get a couple of snotty kids, or an unpredictable hours job, and you learn why.

• Rob says:

  21 Sep21 September 22:08

  I do like the Banff hotel – never stayed there but have had a mooch around, seems like something out of Harry Potter! It is out in the woods though. I think we were in the Cariboo Lodge downtown!

• Dave says:

  23 Sep23 September 03:41

  The reason that so many of the old CP railway hotels are currently Fairmont hotels, is because Fairmont and CP are essentially the same. It was actually CP Hotels that bought the Fairmont hotel chain many years ago, and decided to continue operating under the Fairmont name vs. the CP name.

  I don’t quite understand the suggestion that Fairmont could “sell” many of those properties that don’t fit the new brand. Most were sold off years ago. Fairmont today is mainly in the business of managing their hotels, not owing them. The iconic Banff Springs is currently owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees pension fund (OMERS); Fairmont manages it. The famous Chateau Frontenac is owned by a Quebec pension fund. Fairmont might still own some of their branded properties, but I don’t think very many.

  I have no idea what the terms of the management contracts are, but presumably if the ownership of an individual hotel objected to the plans of the new owners of FRHI, they would have some sort of recourse. I can’t imagine the management contracts grant FRHI and it’s successors management rights in perpetuity.

  • Rob says:

    23 Sep23 September 09:02

    I was being simplistic in what I wrote, apologies. The management contracts have an NPV value, eg if the fee is £1m per year and the contract has 10 years left then the contract is probably worth £4m.

    There are probably change of control clauses though – look at what happened to IHG and Kimpton in SanFran.

• Andrew (SJC) says:

  24 Sep24 September 07:04

  What rumors? Who is speculating beyond some silly drabble about IHG bidding 1.9 GBP for Fairmont, if that was factual it would say for FRHI the parent company of Fairmont. Without actual references this article and others are pure click bait.

  I am taking a I’ll believe it when I see it stance.

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