Maverick Document Signings, which provides remote notary and identification verification services to car dealerships, has been purchased by private equity firm 1876 Partners, Colonnade Securities said.
The artificial exhaust note of the Charger Daytona is part of Dodge’s effort to convince fans of Hellcats, Scat Packs and Demons to try its EVs.
If you’ve lost track of how many people in your orbit have recently posted pictures of themselves at a Formula One race or Taylor Swift concert, chances are you’re not alone. According to new research from Collinson International Ltd., which owns Priority Pass and LoungeKey airport lounges around the world, sports and music tourism are growing at unprecedented rates and are forecast to represent a $1.5 trillion industry by 2032.
Sports tourism represents the overwhelming majority of that figure. Valued at $564.7 billion in 2023, it’s expected to skyrocket to $1.33 trillion in the next eight years. Music tourism, meanwhile, is projected to contribute an additional $13.8 billion, more than doubling its current valuation of $6.6 billion.
For the purposes of its report, published on July 29, Collinson defined travelers as anyone who flew to an event, whether internationally or within their own country. Of 8,537 surveyed travelers from 17 countries, more than four in five (83%) have flown to a sporting event while 71% have boarded a plane for a concert in the past three years, or plan to in the next 12 months.
Ask a luxury-minded globetrotter to name their favorite hotel brands and chances are you’ll hear some combination of the following names: Four Seasons Resort & Club, Aman Resorts Group Ltd., Marriott International Inc.’s Luxury Collection and the Ritz Carlton Hotel Co. LLC, or Rosewood Hotels & Resorts LLC.
Now, Hilton Hotels Worldwide Holdings Inc. is doing its best to get on that list. Some loyalists would say it already belongs there — if only for its best-known Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts and Conrad Hotels & Resorts brands.
But even Hilton’s top brass concedes that the hotel behemoth’s reputation lies mainly with road warriors rather than luxury seekers. While Marriott has been busy expanding into luxury all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean and Ritz-Carlton yachts, Hilton has spent the past year focusing on new corporate-leaning brands, such as Tempo by Hilton.
“Here’s the irony — Hilton didn’t have a full category’s worth of luxury brands a few years ago,” says Dino Michael, senior vice president and global head of Hilton’s luxury brands. “But if you look back before today’s proliferation of luxury brands, Hilton was the international hotel brand,” he says, citing its prominence from the 1950s to 1970s. “We have legitimacy in this space, we just changed focus for a while.”
A new audit of Visit Orlando, conducted at the urging of Orange County commissioners, found the destination marketing agency again failed to provide details of how it spends millions in public money, engaged in lobbying activities without county permission and did not follow rules as it promised five years ago, according to a memo issued Monday by Comptroller Phil Diamond.
In the three-page missive to commissioners, Diamond listed “significant issues” identified by his auditors and questioned some of the agency’s financial practices, while also alleging Visit Orlando wrongly treats interest earned from millions in tourist-tax money as if it were privately donated.
He termed the audit an interim report which is not finished.
Visit Orlando’s private funds face less scrutiny than its public funding, which comes from Orange County’s Tourist Development Tax, or TDT. Those public funds are the overwhelming bulk of its budget; Visit Orlando’s membership dues accounted for less than 3% of the agency’s $109 million funding stream, according to its 2022 federal tax return.