As the chairman and CEO of Prime Group in Chicago, Michael Reschke has been known for years as a developer of office towers and shopping centers. For now, however, he’s sinking his money into hotels, opening a 610-room JW Marriott in his city’s business district just before Thanksgiving, at a mountainous cost of $360 million. Next up, Reschke is planning a smaller 240-room hotel two blocks away in partnership with Ian Schrager. 

“I got started in planning for the JW Marriott back in 2007, just before the market collapsed,” says Reschke. “I feel lucky that now that it’s opening the industry is fully back on the road to recovery. I expect to be looking for more hotel opportunities in the future.”

Investors and developers are following Reschke into the market, signaling a buoyant environment for lodging sector transactions in 2011 as a recovering travel industry fills up rooms again. The trend is obvious: In the quarter that ended Sept. 30, U.S. hotel sales reached $2.7 billion, a fourfold increase over the same quarter in 2009, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. For the first nine months of 2010, sales of full-service properties had more than doubled to $5.6 billion. 

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