ISSTA Lines (TASE: ISTA) subsidiary ISSTA Assets, Israel's largest tourist company, and the Fattal Hotel Management Ltd. chain have announced their joint acquisition in equal shares of three hotels with 800 rooms in the Cypriot resort town of Paphos. The acquisition price is believed to be €80 million. Fattal owns 38 hotels in Israel and 85 hotels in Europe,
The three hotels - Cypria Maris, Cypria Bay, and Laura - are on the Paphos seafront. They host guests on a full room-and-board basis. The Cypria Bay Hotel has its own private beach, large swimming pools, a covered pool, a fitness room, a spa, and two restaurants as well as a dining room and all rooms face the sea. The Cypria Maris Hotel is completing special renovations on all its rooms. It also has a private beach, pools, a tennis court, a spa, and four restaurants. The Laura Hotel has a water park, pools, two restaurants, a spa, a fitness room, and extensive public areas.
The joint acquisition, which follows the Fattal chain's international expansion, is part of ISSTA's tourism-focused real estate expansion strategy. ISSTA conducts its real estate business through ISSTA Assets, which invests in income-producing hotel real estate in Israel and overseas as a synergetic supplement to ISSTA's tourist business, and in order to diversity the company's revenue sources.
ISSTA Israel and the Fattal chain will be responsible for marketing vacation packages for these hotels to Israelis, while Fattal will manage the hotels. ISSTA and TUS Airways will operate at least four weekly flights from Haifa to Paphos, in addition to the existing flights to Paphos from Ben Gurion Airport, in order to offer a greater selection of vacation packages.
Fattal chairman and CEO David Fattal said, "The Fattal hotel chain is providing the Israeli tourist with a variety of vacation experiences and innovation in Israel and overseas. Paphos, which was recently selected as Europe's cultural capital, has for years been an extremely attractive destination for tourists from the UK and Russia. This acquisition is aimed at making Paphos accessible to the Israeli tourist and an attractive designation for Israeli vacationers. We are glad to cooperate with ISSTA, Israel's leading tourist company, which has enormous capabilities in marketing and creating new tourist hubs for Israelis."
ISSTA CEO Achishai Gal said, "We are continuing the development of ISSTA's real estate arm in cooperation with the Fattal group, a leading international hotel chain. Cooperation with Fattal will create synergy between the two companies' advantages: Fattal's hotel management and provision of vacation experiences to an extensive market and ISSTA's marketing power as Israel's leading tourism concern. ISSTA owns a number of successful hotels in Israel, including the Cramim Resort and Spa Hotel, the Rimonim Hotel in Eilat, a business hotel in Herzliya (due to open in the near future), and a boutique hotel to be built on Brenner Street in Tel Aviv. We believe that building a portfolio of income-producing hotels, both overseas and in Israel, is enabling us to fully exercise our tourism capabilities, while building a significant growth engine for the coming years with a key contribution to our cash flow from the real estate sector.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on March 6, 2017
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