Hilton Opens Hotel In Colombia, Other Projects In Store

Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE:H) is focused on unit growth in a bid to maintain its position as the fastest-growing global hospitality company. Recently, the company has announced the opening of Hilton Bogota Corferias. This marked the company’s 20th property in Colombia.

The 410-room hotel has meeting and event space of more than 13,000 sq. ft. The hotel also has fitness and recreation center. The company is confident of succeeding in the region as “Colombia’s tourism industry continues to set records with a nine percent growth in visitor arrivals last year, maintaining a positive year over year momentum.”

The company has nearly 150 hotels in in 25 countries across the Caribbean and Latin America. The company has robust development pipeline of above 80 hotels in Caribbean and Latin America, which includes six in the Colombia.

Meanwhile, shares of Hilton have gained 24.9%, outperforming its industry’s rally of 20.3 % in the past three months.

Strategic Expansion to Drive Growth

As of Dec 31, 2018, Hilton's development pipeline comprised more than 2,400 hotels, with more than 364,000 rooms across 103 countries and territories — including 35 countries and territories, where Hilton currently does not have any running hotels. For 2019, the company anticipates net unit growth of 6.5%.

Hilton’s broad geographic diversity lowers the effect of volatility in individual markets. Notably, more than half of the company’s pipeline is located outside the United States. More than 30% of the pipeline is located in the Asia Pacific region, where demand has been high.

Moreover, growing middle-class population in China is creating demand for hospitality services. Further, Europe’s RevPAR trends are being supported by favorable exchange rates as well as strength in regions including Spain, the U.K., Germany, Turkey, to name a few.

Zacks Rank & Other Key Picks

Hilton, which share space with Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE:H) sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Some other top-ranked stocks in the same space include Huazhu Group Ltd. (NYSE:H) and Red Lion Hotels Corp. (NYSE:H) . Both the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Huazhu Group Limited, which was previously known as China Lodging Group Limited, has an impressive long-term earnings growth rate of 20.9%.

Red Lion Hotels earnings for the current year are likely to witness growth of 95.6%.

Radical New Technology Creates $12.3 Trillion Opportunity

Imagine buying Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock in the early days of personal computers… or Motorola (NYSE:MSI) after it released the world’s first cell phone. These technologies changed our lives and created massive profits for investors.

Today, we’re on the brink of the next quantum leap in technology. 7 innovative companies are leading this “4th Industrial Revolution” - and early investors stand to earn the biggest profits.

See the 7 breakthrough stocks now>>