Hospitality

Westin-Stonebriar-Frisco

By Steve Van, president & CEO, Prism Hotels & Resorts While 2020 was a trying year for companies in every industry, the hospitality sector has been really taking it on the chin. Restaurateurs and airline executives might disagree, but hoteliers have arguably had it worse than any other industry. The financial impact on the hotel business from COVID-19 is 10 times worse than the hit from the late 2000s recession — and that’s a very big deal. With the rate of business travel falling off a cliff and leisure travel down more than ever around the world, 2020 was a year that many hospitality executives would like to forget. But that doesn’t mean the sky is falling — or that brighter times aren’t in store. But what do those timelines look like? How should hotel professionals be managing the current crisis, and what are the real estate implications for investors? Let’s take a clear-eyed look at the good, the bad and the ugly and try and answer those questions by examining key trends and thinking about what’s likely to come next for hotel developers, operators and investors. Southern Sunshine One important caveat to the story of catastrophic hotel business drop-offs …

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Strong gains in population and travel spending highlight Colorado as an increasingly popular place to work and visit, boosting demand for hotel rooms in the state. Leisure travel spending has climbed by 28.9 percent over the past five years, surpassing $22 billion in 2018. More than half of those funds were spent on commercial lodging. Business travel is also bolstered by companies either entering or expanding in the state. These demand factors translate to hotel occupancy and revenue metrics that have consistently exceeded the national average since 2014. Colorado’s November annual average occupancy rate rose 90 basis points year over year to 68.1 percent, compared with the national metric that held flat at about 66.2 percent. Colorado’s annual average RevPAR grew 3.8 percent over that same span, more than triple the U.S. pace, to $98.48. Robust gains in both occupancy and RevPAR demonstrate how demand for Colorado hotel rooms has outpaced numerous supply additions. The state’s inventory of hotel rooms has expanded by about 13 percent over the past five years, with 4,226 hotel rooms under construction. More than half of the keys underway will be delivered in Denver and Colorado Springs. Notable new projects in the Denver metro include …

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Thus far in 2019, much of the growth and development in Rhode Island has been focused on downtown Providence. Much of this has to do with the colleges and hospitals, as well as the residential component in general. But Rhode Island continues to develop hotels, especially in downtown, due in part simply to having a vibrant, in-demand city. Officials want to create the ability for Providence to compete for and attract top-tier conventions. Hotel Development Wave With 1,000-plus hotel rooms coming on line over the next 18 to 24 months, along with another 1,000 residential units of new and redeveloped housing, the long sought-after downtown Providence residential market seems to be here. Examples of this hotel development include the following: • Procaccianti Group’s 176 room Marriott Residence Inn at the Convention Center, coming in the second half of 2019; • First Bristol & Paolino Properties’ 120-room Homewood Suites Extended Stay, which opened in April; • Hotel Beatrice, 28-32 Kennedy Plaza, 48 rooms, under construction; • Best Western Glo Hotel, 322 Washington Street, 76 rooms, commission/board review approved; • Aloft hotel, Innovation Complex, 170 rooms, commission/board review approved; • Holiday Inn, 371 Pine Street, 91 rooms, commission/board review approved; • Hotel …

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The Hawaii investment sale market was active in 2018 with an abundance of capital seeking investment opportunities throughout the state and across all product types. Mortgage availability from local banks and non-local financiers remained strong, and there was a steady flow of new interest from debt and equity sources looking for first opportunities in Hawaii. Last year’s transaction volume (including entity level) was up 33 percent from 2017 to $5.5 billion. Institutional and cross-border investment volumes were up from 2017 and performing well above the 10-year average. It was a slower year for private investors and REITs, though institutional capital from Singapore, Zurich, Kuwait, Germany and Japan were the foreign standouts in 2018. Entity-level activity boosted Hawaii’s transaction volume significantly in 2018. We anticipate this story to continue to spill over into Hawaii through 2019 as institutions deploy large amounts of capital to build scale. Brookfield’s acquisition of GGP was the largest entity-level transaction, which included the 2.5 million-square-foot Ala Moana Center with its two office buildings consisting of about 400,000 square feet, the Whalers Village in Maui and the Prince Kuhio Plaza in Hilo. The hospitality sector led the charge for the third year in a row with $2.45 …

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The face of Louisville is changing rapidly, but it has leveraged what the state of Kentucky is historically known for best, bourbon. Louisville is a short drive from most of the legendary distilleries in the Commonwealth. However, the downtown Urban Bourbon Trail is booming with tourism and many brands actually distilling their spirits onsite. Jim Beam’s Urban Stillhouse, the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience, Copper & Kings, Angel’s Envy Distillery and Rabbit Hole Distillery are locations where patrons can sample and buy their drink of choice and learn about the history of these companies and the evolution of the industry as a whole. Most recently in June, Brown-Forman Corp. opened its Old Forester Distilling Co. experience at the newly restored Whiskey Row on Main Street. The company is not only distilling and sharing its history at the site, but like others on the Urban Bourbon Trail there are areas to host receptions and parties. Duluth Trading opened next door on Whiskey Row late last year to begin to fill a growing need for retail space downtown. Convention Center, Hotels After two years being closed, earlier this month Louisville celebrated the reopening of the $207 million renovation and reconstruction of the Kentucky …

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MGM-Grand-Las-Vegas

One of the first questions clients ask when considering a hotel casino acquisition or the development of a new hotel casino project in Nevada is whether they have to obtain a gaming license. Since applying for a gaming license requires the disclosure of extensive, private personal information — and obtaining a gaming license can take several months — buyers and developers often want to learn about alternatives to the license. Those alternatives are briefly summarized below. Sale-Leaseback: The sale-leaseback structure involves the current hotel casino owner and/or operator selling substantially all of the assets to the buyer. The buyer, in turn, then leases all of such assets back to the seller. The seller retains the gaming assets and liabilities, utilizes the other assets per the lease and continues to operate the hotel casino for the lease term. The advantage of this structure is that the sale transaction can be closed quickly since the parties do not have to wait for the buyer to obtain its gaming license. A potential disadvantage to the seller is that it still has to operate the property. Possible disadvantages to the buyer are that the buyer assumes the future licensing risk and, generally speaking, cannot …

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PORTLAND, ORE. — Union Investment Real Estate GmbH has acquired The Porter, a 294-room boutique hotel in downtown Portland, for $148.8 million. The 16-story hotel is located at 1355 SW 2nd Ave. in the city’s Central Business District. The asset is part of the Curio Collection by Hilton brand. Syracuse, N.Y.-based Widewaters Hotels is the hotel’s developer, vendor and operator. Union Investment purchased the property from Widewaters via its open-ended real estate fund Unilmmo: Global. “The Porter is the ideal addition to our U.S. portfolio, which is set to grow at a similar pace going forward as in recent years,” says Andreas Löcher, head of investment management hospitality at Union Investment. The Porter, which opened this past January, features an upmarket restaurant on the ground floor, a coffee bar and a grab-and-go market, as well as a rooftop restaurant and lounge. The hotel also provides about 1,200 square feet of conference space, in addition to a heated indoor pool and a fitness center, which offers individual meditation and yoga rooms. Portland is Union Investment’s sixth targeted hotel location in the U.S. and its second on the West Coast. The Hamburg, Germany-based real estate investment manager acquired the Hilton Garden Inn …

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Back in mid-2017, in a piece that was published right here in Heartland Real Estate Business, I talked about what might be in store for the remainder of the year. Specifically, I wrote that while “concerns about oversupply will likely persist in many [Midwestern] markets,” the outlook was not as grim as some industry analysts had been forecasting — a “second wind in the hotel sector” was “helping to calm the waters.” The general sense was that we would continue to see moderate growth. Happily for hoteliers across the Midwest, the market has played out fairly close to those predictions. A generally better-than-expected second half of the year didn’t allay everyone’s concerns, of course. I participated in an investor call recently with some of our lenders and their local analysts, and they were still talking about the threat of oversupply. They expressed some concerns about the prospect of the hotel boom in my home market of Chicago turning into a bust. Oversupply is a valid concern. From where I stand, however, the pattern over the past six to 12 months is not showing any real sign of changing. While the rate of growth has slowed slightly, the demand side of …

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The Detroit metropolitan area has experienced significant economic growth in recent years, fueled by a strengthening auto industry as well as the continued diversification of the local employment landscape. The hotel sector is benefitting from existing employers expanding operations locally and new entrants to the market. The Big Three automakers continue to invest in the region, while companies like e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. are building large warehouse facilities. Revenue gains for hotels were accordingly robust during the 2010–2016 period. Revenue per available room (RevPAR) during that stretch grew nearly 71 percent, rising from a low of roughly $38 in 2009 at the depths of the Great Recession to over $64 by year-end 2016. Both the average daily rate (ADR) and occupancy have posted consistent gains since 2010. Moreover, hoteliers sold a record number of room nights in the city of Detroit in 2016, according to STR. Occupancy levels approached 70 percent by the end of 2016, with ADRs of nearly $150 in the central business district (CBD). The data for 2017 show a relatively stable occupancy level with robust gains in ADR. The record performance achieved in this expansionary period has spurred tremendous hotel development in the downtown core and …

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AUSTIN, TEXAS — Summit Hotel Properties (NYSE: INN) has purchased a four-property hotel portfolio for $164 million. The portfolio contains a total of 652 guestrooms. The acquisition includes the 207-room Courtyard New Haven at Yale in New Haven, Conn.; the 148-room Hilton Garden Inn Boston/Waltham in Waltham, Mass.; the 175-room Residence Inn Cleveland Downtown in Cleveland; and the 122-room Homewood Suites by Hilton Tucson/St. Philip’s Plaza University in Tucson, Ariz. The Courtyard New Haven is situated adjacent to Yale University. It is the only Marriott-branded hotel within nearly 10 miles of downtown New Haven. The hotel underwent a renovation of all public spaces and guestrooms in 2016. The Hilton Garden Inn Boston/Waltham is centrally located along the Route 128/Interstate 95 corridor known as America’s Technology Highway. The hotel benefits from strong corporate demand with 16.4 million square feet of office space within three miles of the property and another 1 million square feet under construction. The recently renovated Residence Inn Cleveland Downtown is positioned within the Central Business District’s 9.5 million square feet of Class A office space, which includes the headquarters of Fortune 500 companies Sherwin-Williams, KeyCorp and Cliffs Natural Resources. The Homewood Suites by Hilton Tucson/St. Philip’s Plaza …

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