Jersey hotel to spend £1m on watersport attraction and other international hotel news

Jersey hotel to spend £1m on watersport attraction
Jersey’s Merton Hotel, part of Seymour Hotels, is to spend £1m on a watersports attraction, Flowrider. Flowrider is a stationary wave that allows riders to emulate the manoeuvres of other board sports. Designed and created in the USA, the technology is claimed to be a first for a hotel in either the Channel Islands or the UK. It is scheduled to open in April of this year when the Merton re-opens ahead of the summer season.

URBN Hotels & Resorts has opens first property
Boutique hotel company URBN Hotels & Resorts has opened its first property. The 26 room URBN Hotels Shanghai also claims to be China’s first carbon neutral hotel and has been built using locally sourced and reclaimed materials. It also incorporates solar shades and water based air conditioning systems. Through Climate Brigade it will be monitoring its energy consumption mitigating its environmental impact via investment in green energy development and emission reduction projects in China.

Barceló moves into Germany
According to Earth Times Spanish hotel group Barceló is to open its first property in Germany, the Barceló Cologne City Center Hotel. The upscale hotel will have more than 300 bedrooms with two restaurants and indoor and outdoor swimming pools. Barceló is running the property as a management contract for hotel owner Losan. Last month Barceló announced that the Paramount chain of hotels in the UK would be rebranded under its name. It had been running the 20 strong chain for owner Dawnay Shore Hotels since September.