Photo Credit: A guest room at a hotel run by Fattal. Fattal Hotel Group
The owner-operator of nearly 330 hotels is betting that its owner-operator model will win in the U.S. market, where other foreign entrants have stumbled.
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Fattal Hotel Group has bought its first hotel in the U.S., a modest deal that carries an outsized signal.
The company said Wednesday it had taken over The Blakely, a pre-war hotel on West 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan, for $38.5 million. It will shut the property for a $13 million renovation and reopen the 117-room hotel in mid-2027.
The price tag is small. But Fattal owns or operates 329 hotels in 22 countries, mainly under its flagship Leonardo brand. The group is run by billionaire David Fattal.
The Blakely is the opening move in what Ronen Nissenbaum, CEO of Leonardo Hotels U.K., Ireland, Benelux, Spain, Portugal, and U.S. Development, called a deliberate, cluster-by-cluster expansion.
"If I put one hotel down in one market, within a few years I'll have 10 or 15," Nissenbaum told Skift. "We could be at 400 to 450 hotels by 2030."
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Tags: asset-light , Fattal Hotel Group , hotel asset market , hotel brands , hotel development , hotel management , hotel owners , Leonardo Hotels , new york city
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