Shangri-La Asia has signed an agreement to manage and take a 26 per cent stake in a luxury hotel to be built in New York.
The management agreement for the 206-room property, set to open in 2010, marks the company's fourth hotel under development in the United States and the first time it makes an equity investment in that market.
The Manhattan hotel is estimated to cost between US$500 million and US$550 million, according to a Shangri-La spokesman.
Sixty-six of the 206 hotel rooms will be sold as condominium units. Private New York property developer RFR Holding and ING Real Estate, a unit of Dutch financial company ING Group, will take up the remaining stake. Construction is set to begin later this year on the 64-storey hotel tower.
'It comes as no surprise that they would want to expand to New York,' Bank of China International analyst Ken Yeung said. 'After getting hotels in Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas they want to get into some first-tier cities in the US.'
Shangri-La manages 50 hotels representing an inventory of more than 24,000 rooms, with 40 more projects under development.
The group owned stakes in 37 of the properties in operation as of December last year, most of them in the mainland.
