Hunter Hotel Advisors brokered the sales of more hotels in 2019 than in any year in its history.
Sellers and buyers that generated $1.2 billion under Hunter’s guidance were a mixed bag and included institutional firms, private investment groups and hotel companies.
Many hotel brokers expect to tally similar results, making 2019 one of the most active years in hotel transactions in the U.S.
Industry analysts we interviewed expect 2020 to be an even busier period of hotel investment in part because private investors will continue to recycle their capital and shop for places to stash their cash.
This episode of Lodging Leaders takes a look at the history of hotel transactions last year as well as the whole past decade, including the growth of REITs, the emergence of private equity and the expansion of ownership groups that aggressively grew their portfolios with branded select-service assets. We also explore what might lie ahead this year as hotels in many major markets experience a slowdown in business.
We talk to Teague Hunter, CEO of Hunter Hotel Advisors in Atlanta; Lou Plasencia, CEO of The Plasencia Group in Tampa, Florida; Daniel Lesser, president and CEO of LW Hospitality Advisors in New York City; Kevin Mallory, senior managing director of CBRE Hotels in Chicago; and Brian Waldman, executive vice president of investment for Peachtree Hotel Group in Atlanta.
Resources and Links
Ginny Morrison of Evanston, Illinois, is a 33-year veteran of Spire Hospitality, a hotel management company with a portfolio that spans coast-to-coast. As vice president of sales and marketing, Morrison saw the coronavirus pandemic decimate the meetings business. More than a year later, she’s witnessing a comeback as small-meeting planners are actively booking events for the last half of 2021 and beyond. As public health agencies expand COVID-19 vaccination programs across the U.S. and states ease up on public-gathering restrictions designed to keep the virus at bay, the hotel industry is seeing small meetings begin a comeback. In Episode 317, Long Live Lodging covers the state of the small-meetings sector and how hotels can grab their share of the meetings business during and post-pandemic. This report is part of our ongoing coverage about the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the hospitality industry.
The Hunter Hotel Investment Conference will be the industry’s first large event to be held during the coronavirus pandemic. The Atlanta event will be a hybrid format of in-person and virtual access, also an industry first. Lee Hunter, chairman of the conference, knows the level of expectation is high among other conference planners as well as industry professionals eager to network after more than a yearlong hiatus. Episode 316 of Lodging Leaders podcast features Hunter as he tells what it takes to re-launch the industry’s conference circuit amid the COVID-19 outbreak.