Wyndham Hotel Group and German hotel management company HR Group partnered to open at least six new hotels across Europe under the Ramada brand.
The partners already opened two hotels. The first—the 222-room Ramada Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the Netherlands—has access to Amsterdam’s main international airport. The second—the 95-room Ramada Flensburg in Germany—was recently refurbished near Flensburg’s harbor and Baltic Sea. Another four new hotels are slated to open in 2018 in Berlin, Munich, Hannover and Bottrop, Germany.
These new properties will expand Wyndham’s portfolio of approximately 470 hotels in Europe. They will also join Wyndham’s list of 11 hotels in Berlin, three in Hannover, eight hotels in Munich and one additional hotel in Amsterdam. The new property in the pipeline for Bottrop will be Wyndham’s first in the city.
Wyndham’s new properties will join the several hotels added to the portfolio last year, including its Athens city-center hotel—Wyndham’s first in Greece. Hotel operator Zeus International converted the building owned by Viohalco into the 273-room Wyndham Grand Athens, which opened in early 2017.
The new partnership follows the addition of Dimitris Manikis as president and MD for the EMEA region. Wyndham hired Manikis to lead the expansion of all Wyndham Hotel Group brands in the EMEA region, and enhance the performance of all new and existing franchise and managed hotels.
The partnership will also help Wyndham continue expanding its presence in the region following the sale of its European vacation rental business, which transferred more than 110,000 units to Platinum Equity for close to $1.3 billion. As part of the deal, the vacation rentals company entered a 20-year agreement to pay a 1-percent royalty fee of net revenue to Wyndham Hotels for the right to use the Wyndham Vacation Rentals brand, and will participate in the Wyndham Rewards loyalty program.