Aston Hotels’ parent
records net gain

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

ResortQuest International Inc. today reported a 54 percent increase in its second-quarter net income, a profit of $2 million, or 11 cents a share, compared with $1.3 million, or 7 cents a share, a year earlier.

Based in Memphis, Tenn., ResortQuest is the parent of Hawaii's Aston Hotels & Resorts and nearly 30 other vacation and resort management businesses across the country.

The company said its Hawaii revenues of $30.6 million in the quarter ending June 30 were down 2.6 percent from $31.4 million in the 1998 quarter, but Hawaii occupancy was up, at 70.4 percent from 68.2 percent a year earlier.

That brought Hawaii revenue per available unit up 1 percent to $68.34 a day, from $67.63 in the 1998 quarter, the parent company said.

ResortQuest's total revenues of $31 million in the latest quarter were up 21.6 percent from $25.5 million in the year-earlier period.

Some of the improvement in ResortQuest's results was because of acquisitions and the way the company does its financial reporting. Formed in May 1998 through a public offering that financed the acquisition of Aston and 12 other companies, ResortQuest has since bought 15 other businesses, three of them in the latest quarter.

In its year-over-year comparisons, the company accounts for the original group of companies as if it had owned them through the entire year-earlier period but later acquisitions only as they come into the money stream.

ResortQuest stock today rose 37 cents to close at $9.12.