Luxury hotel to expand ‘21’ Club brand
Donnell to be rebuilt as state-of-the-art library facility
Hamilton, Bermuda and New York City. November 7, 2007 – Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. (NYSE: OEH, www.orient-express.com), owners or part-owners and managers of 50 luxury hotels, restaurants, tourist trains and river cruise businesses operating in 25 countries, today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the land and building of the Donnell branch of the New York Public Library (the “Library”), located at 24 West 53rd Street in New York City.
Orient-Express plans to build a 150-room luxury hotel, including a rebuilt “state-of-the-art” Donnell Library location within it. The hotel will house contemporary dining, spa and wellness facilities, as well as expanded banqueting and dining space for the company’s existing restaurant and dining business, ‘21’ Club. ‘21’ Club backs onto the Library premises in its location at 21 West 52nd Street and the two buildings will be connected. The property will be marketed under a new ‘21’ Hotel brand name. The original ‘21’ Club, a celebrated New York City institution, will be preserved at its current location in the heart of midtown Manhattan, with enhanced facilities.
“Expanding our luxury brands through select real estate development projects is a core strategy for Orient-Express,” said Orient-Express Hotels President and CEO, Paul White. “In New York, everything points to the need for new luxury hotel rooms, especially in midtown Manhattan. We see this as an avenue to establish a new standard of boutique property and create a luxury experience for both leisure and corporate travelers.”
“Our agreement with Orient-Express presents an extraordinary opportunity for us to create a modern, new circulating library at the same location as our current Donnell facility, which was opened in 1955, and is outdated,” said David Offensend, Chief Operating Officer of the New York Public Library. “The cost of renovating Donnell is prohibitive. With this agreement, we’ll be able to embark on the creation of a technologically advanced Donnell Library for our users, one that can set the standard for the 21st century.”
Under the terms of the transaction, Orient-Express will pay the Library $59 million in cash, in addition to the value of the library space, which the Library will own and occupy. Construction, which is subject to Orient-Express obtaining all necessary permits, is scheduled to start in 2009. The hotel is expected to open in early 2011. The overall project is estimated at $220 million inclusive of the purchase of the Library.
The New York Public Library will retain approximately 28,000 square feet in the building for the new, “state-of-the-art” Donnell Library, which will occupy three levels, including the ground floor of the ‘21’ Hotel building. The Orient-Express
project will provide much needed upgrades to the library’s outdated infrastructure, including overhauls to its HVAC system and elevators. The library will close to the public in fall 2008, and the rebuilding is expected to be completed in no more than three and one half years. During construction, the Library will seek a temporary site to provide Donnell’s essential services to the public and develop a detailed plan to make its collections available at other New York Public Library locations. All information about the temporary site and relocation of Donnell’s essential services will be available on the Library’s web site (www.nypl.org) well before the scheduled start of construction.
Orient-Express noted that over the last several years, the conversion of many New York City hotels into condominiums has taken much high-end lodging supply out of the market. Smith Travel Research data shows 23 hotels have closed in New York since 2000, with many of the hotels converted to luxury condominiums during the housing boom. The hotel room reduction coincides with demand surging from overseas travelers capitalizing on a weak U.S. dollar. This has resulted in higher rates and corresponding profits for the New York hotel industry. Recent industry studies show that New York City could absorb a further 10,000 room supply without affecting overall occupancy and pricing. Manhattan’s luxury tier hotel occupancy rate for 2007 year to date is currently 76%. There has been a 46% increase in average hotel rates from 2002 thru mid-August 2007. According to Cushman & Wakefield, despite new hotel developments currently in the pipeline, the additional rooms fall short of providing adequate supply, and most of the planned properties are select service hotels that are smaller and limited in scope.
###
About Orient-Express Hotels
Orient-Express Hotels is a hotel and leisure company providing luxury travel experiences for discerning travelers in areas of outstanding cultural, historic or recreational interest. Founded in 1976 when the company acquired Hotel Cipriani in Venice, Orient-Express believes that discerning travelers will choose a famous individual property in preference to a chain brand, so none of its businesses is called Orient-Express except the fabled Venice Simplon-Orient-Express luxury train which operates through Europe, linking London, Paris and Venice. Orient-Express chooses to own or part-own its businesses, believing equity returns are greater than management fee income alone and continues to seek out unique properties with expansion potential and to introduce new experiences, restoring romance, glamour and style to international travel. Downloadable high resolution photography of Orient-Express’ hotels, trains and cruises is available at www.orient-express.com in our ‘image library’ which appears under ‘media information’.
About The New York Public Library
The New York Public Library was created in 1895 with the consolidation of the private libraries of John Jacob Astor and James Lenox with the Samuel Jones Tilden Trust. The Library provides free and open access to its physical and electronic collections and information, as well as to its services. It comprises four research centers - The Humanities and Social Sciences Library; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and the Science, Industry and Business Library - and 87 Branch Libraries in Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx. Research and circulating collections combined total more than 50 million items. In addition, each year the Library presents thousands of exhibitions and public programs, which include classes in technology, literacy, and English as a second language. The New York Public Library serves over 16 million patrons who come through its doors annually and another 25 million users internationally, who access collections and services through its website, http://www.nypl.org.
About ‘21’ Club
‘21’ Club is a highly successful restaurant and banqueting business which originally opened on its present site on West 52nd Street in 1929. Its origins lie in ‘Jack and Charlie’s 21’, the most celebrated of speakeasies in the Prohibition Era. It maintains its reputation as the gathering place for the great and the good, the famous and the infamous and for glamorous people from every walk of life. Its fame, in part, was garnered by its ability to stump federal agents during the prohibition era by the use of an ingenious system of pulleys and levers, which, at the first sign of a raid, would sweep bottles from the bar shelves and hurl the smashed remains down a chute into the New York Sewer system. It also housed a secret wine cellar, located in the house next door and accessed by a two ton door built to look like a brick wall. This was the location of the private table of the Mayor, Jimmy Walker. Almost every President since FDR has dined at ‘21’ and it has featured in more movies than any other New York restaurant. In short, this is a business steeped in history and tradition, beloved of its regulars, aspired to by corporate and private diners and considered part of the fabric of New York City.
Language: English 
