According to rumours, Aareal Bank has put the JW Marriott Venice Resort & SPA on the market for EUR 150 mln (EUR 564,000 per room). The hotel has already been put on the market several times since the German bank took it over in 2011, however, offers of around EUR 120m last year did not meet the seller’s expectations. The JW Marriott Venice occupies the entire island of Sacca Sessola, artificially created in 1870 and initially used as a fuel dump and later as a sanatorium. The island was renamed Rose Island when the luxury hotel opened in 2015.
The transformation of the island was a complex path. In 2000, the municipality sold the island to turn it into a private tourist complex. The first owner was Compagnia Italiana Turismo (CIT), which together with Accor started working on a resort project. After a series of financial problems for CIT, the financier Aareal took over in 2011. The hotel has 266 rooms, including suites with private pools and gardens and a villa with a private pool that can accommodate up to seven people.
A spa and restaurants complete the accommodation offer. According to data from the Veneto Region, from January to November 2023, 1.97 million visitors stayed in hotels in the historic centre of Venice, already higher than the 1.88 million recorded in the whole of 2022 and just below the 2.22 million recorded in the record year of 2019.
On the other hand, according to the Luxury Hotels Database by Thrends, there are 8 5-star hotels in the pipeline in Venice and they will add (new openings) or bring back to the market (re-openings) about 800 keys in the segment. At the moment, the most critical case, following the crisis in Signa, is the renovation of the Hotel Bauer.
A meeting to settle the group’s restructuring plan is scheduled for the end of
end of April, but all eyes are on the hotel in Venice.