ALIS Offers Hope, Caution to Hotel Industry
Beyond the cheery faces and optimistic talk at last month’s Americas Lodging Investment Summit, an undertone of uncertainty and volatility went mostly unspoken. Nearly every conference speaker and person I interviewed only talked about the improving industry fundamentals and the vast opportunities for transactions this year and beyond. Of course, they were all right: 12 months ago no one could have definitively predicted how quickly ...
Home2 Suites Debuts Brand in North Carolina
It takes a special kind of hotel company to develop a new brand’s first property, like the Home2 Suites by Hilton that opened yesterday in Fayetteville, NC. Alabama-based LBA Properties, a 35-year-old, vertically integrated developer and operator with 60-plus properties in eight states in the Southeast, developed the first Home2 on behalf of Apple REIT Cos....
ALIS Live: Hotel Investment Leaders Like the Future
Like most other speakers and attendees at this week’s Americas Lodging Investment Summit, the big dogs of hotel financing were enthusiastic about the next couple of years. The final session at ALIS brought together eight members of IREFAC, the industry’s top investment and financing think tank, and their consensus was for a bright future for lenders, borrowers and owners....
Resort Investments Promising for Discerning Players
With the prospect of resorts outperforming hotels in 2011, more investors will be attracted to this exciting comeback market. In Hotel Horizons, Colliers PKF Hospitality Research forecasts U.S. resorts will show year-over-year RevPAR growth of 12.3 percent this year versus 10.4 percent for all hotels. Investors must be careful, though, because...
Wave of ‘Physical Distress’ Still to Come
While hotel transactions have increased from a trickle to a steady stream in recent months, not everyone is feeling the flow. Trophy assets in gateway cities are trading at pre-recession prices, while many distressed assets continue to languish. ...
Distress Heads List of Top Hotel Stories
Just about everyone agrees 2010 was a better year for the hotel industry than was ’09. Occupancy, rates and RevPAR numbers finally went from contraction to growth, and while many properties are in varying degrees of financial distress, the market for transactions is beginning to show some life....
Leo Wells: Excessive Debt Is the Enemy
Leverage is like cocaine, theorizes Leo Wells, founder and president of Wells Real Estate Funds, which has invested more than $12 billion in real estate since its inception in 1984. “Everybody is going to start off as a social user, and debt is that way,” he observes. “Pretty soon they've snorted their whole life up their nose.”...
2011: Stellar, Or Just Not As Bad?
The volume of good news about the hotel business arriving on my computer screen has increased dramatically in recent months and weeks. Every week, we hear of improvements in occupancy and rate, and we get press releases daily on refinancings, acquisitions and even new hotel openings. Clearly, 2011 will be...
Hotel Dealmaking Heats Up As Occupancy Rises
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,...
Did You Miss the Bottom of the Hotel Cycle?
The U.S. lodging industry hit bottom sometime during late 2009 and early 2010 and has started to recover nicely. The recovery occurred about 10 to 12 months earlier than what many industry experts believed two years ago. Although unemployment still remains a nagging problem for millions of out-of-work Americans, the economic engine within the U.S. is rebounding as shown by the growth in gross domestic product. ...
Firm Targets Distress for Investment
As economic and industry fundamentals improve, so do the number of investors looking to take advantage of the growing hotel distress and increase in transactions. The latest example is Strategic Capital Solutions, a New-York based real estate investment firm, which earlier this month unveiled its Hospitality Financing Program....
Sound Bites From the Lodging Conference
There is no shortage of drama in the hotel industry these days as evidenced by the programming at the 16th annual Lodging Conference. The hot-button topics have included the troubled commercial mortgage-backed securities market, distressed property workouts and the art of hotel receivership. ...
Opportunities Turning into Transactions
REITs Are Capitalizing on Bargain-Basement Prices As Industry Heats Up
The hotel sector went nearly dark through much of 2009 in the face of falling revenues and mounting losses, but big deals are starting to make headlines again. Investors are standing in line for the first time in several years, eager to scoop up assets, while cautious sellers who had been waiting for the economy to recover are finally beginning to budge. A new deal-making cycle is kicking into gear. ...
Hawaii Hotels Hitting New Lows
NEWS: Famed Ilikai Hotel Will Close As Occupancy Plummets
Hotels in Hawaii are struggling to survive as occupancy keeps slipping to new lows. One of the islands’ most recognizable properties was planning to close ...
Apple REIT Chief Touts Cash
If cash is king, Glade Knight is king of kings. The chairman and CEO of Apple REIT Cos. touted the value of cash as a business-building tool during a keynote address Monday at the Hunter Investment Conference in Atlanta. Through its nine funds, Apple now ...
Values to Rise in 2010?
Since the government has notified us we've officially been in a recession since December 2007, we have a broad explanation for why hotel values declined...
The Remaking of FelCor
FelCor, one of the nation's largest hotel REITs, has been through a period of dramatic change in the last two and a half years and is plotting a course...
Historic Trust to Dallas Hotel Rescue
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has put the empty Statler Hilton in downtown Dallas on its list of endangered historic places. Built in 1956, the Statler was chosen because it represents a significant moment in the history of the Texas city, according to the Trust....
Hershey Boosts Corporate Network
Hershey Entertainment & Resorts adopted BridgeWave Communications' gigabit wireless links to extend the spread of its corporate backbone and give remote...
Tropicana Entertainment Files for Bankruptcy
The credit crunch has hit Tropicana Entertainment, forcing the casino and resort company to file for bankruptcy. Nevertheless, the Kentucky-based firm vows to continue to serve its customers on a "business-as-usual" basis at the nine properties affected....
