Celebrities Opening Hotels

This story was in the current issue of Newsweek. I have to admit, I find it pretty repulsive - of course extreme luxury hotels and inns are a growth business - the rich are getting richer and it's a profitable enterprise to create insanely expensive hideaways for your celebrity friends to visit. Like they need the money. Below is an excerpt and a link to the full story.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18685389/site/newsweek/

Why Celebrities Are Opening Hotels
By Michelle Jana Chan
Newsweek
May 28, 2007

As the growing ranks of celebrity inn-keepers are learning, personality sells rooms a lot better than any plasma TV or Thai spa treatment ever could. At Turtle Inn, the Francis Ford Coppola Family Pavilion—which features pieces from his personal art and antiques collection—starts at $2,000 a night in peak season, triple the price of comparable villas. It's never been more popular. Other well-known personalities, including Giorgio Armani, Clint Eastwood, and Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, have also lent their names to high-end hotel projects. Bill Gates recently bought a major stake in the luxury Four Seasons hotel chain. U2's Bono and the Edge saved Dublin's old Clarence Hotel from demolition in 1992, and in the process turned it and the whole neighborhood around. Indeed, in today's celebrity-obsessed culture, there seems to be no shortage of well-heeled travelers willing to pay a premium to stay at Robert Redford's place in Utah or the Versace palazzo in Australia.

For the high-profile owners, it's easy to see the appeal: hotels have become a richly profitable investment, as well as an exercise in vanity. According to Smith Travel Research, global hotel occupancy for 2006 hit 65 percent, which is considered good in the industry. PricewaterhouseCoopers says that in the United States, occupancy was the highest it's been since 1997, and that the lodging industry made an aggregate profit of $25.3 billion, up almost 12 percent from 2005. This year hotels and resorts stand to profit on average by more than $6,000 for each available room. "It's very hard today for a hotel project not to be successful and make money," says industry analyst Bjorn Hanson. "Hotels certainly benefit from the influence of a personality." Adam Weissenberg, another analyst, says celebrity hoteliers are an extension of the celebrity-owned-restaurant trend that peaked a few years ago.