In 1919, two grand hotels were racing to completion. The Hotel Commodore connected to Grand Central Terminal and owned by The New York Central Railroad officially opened on January 28, 1919. Named after 'Commodore' Cornelius Vanderbilt, the founder of The New York Central Railroad System, it had a whopping 2,000 guestrooms. It also housed the single largest room ever constructed.
If you're thinking of investing in the hotel sector in Europe where should you be looking to put your money? Patrik Hug, Senior Consultant, Advisory & Valuation Services at Christie & Co based in Munich, Germany, says much depends on how risk averse the potential investor is.
Recently, my partner, Guy Maisnik, and I spoke about hotel retail mixed-use development with Kelsi Maree Borland of GlobeSt.com. Her article, Why Retail Owners Are Partnering With Hotels ran with the subtitle, With retail evolving to be more experience-driven, retail owners are finding the benefits of adding boutique hotels to shopping centers.
Following a year of robust transaction activity, hotel capitalization rates remain stable, while hotel NOI and values are under pressure due to slowing RevPAR growth and increasing operating expenses. This article looks at hotel sales and capitalization rate trends, the impact of slowing RevPAR growth on hotel values, and the outlook for 2019. [1]
A possessory interest is created when a private-sector tenant is granted exclusive use of real property (land and/or building) that is owned by a tax-exempt entity, typically a municipality or a state or federal government agency. The right to occupy and use the land and/or building is usually conferred via a lease
On average, hotel prices increased significantly in 2018, as a strong pool of buyers with favorable outlooks kept downward pressure on cap rates. A strong bidding environment for hotels, particularly those in markets where barriers to entry were high and PIPs had already been completed, kept prices strong, resulting in some big wins for hotel sellers that purchased their hotels at the right time during the last downturn.
Hotel owners increasingly rely on hotel management companies to operate their hotels through formalized hotel management agreements (HMA). Separating ownership and operations supposedly benefits both parties: owners are able to invest in hotel real estate and access the professional operating expertise of hotel management companies, while operators can generate important income streams, expand any brands they may have, and earn profits, all without having to invest in the underlying real estate.
For the past four years the opening of dual-branded properties has been very popular among hotel developers. The perceived benefits of building a property with two or more brands are many:
Hotel owners increasingly contract hotel management companies to operate their properties. While extensive research has examined management agreements to determine the balance of power between owners and management companies, little research has investigated the actual role that hotel owners play in property-level decision making. This is perplexing because management companies generally insist that hotel management agreements (HMAs) specifically stipulate that the owner should not seek to influence the hotel's general manager (GM). In other words, in exchange for their services, management companies have generally required owners to relinquish involvement in the hotel's day-to-day business. However, hotel owners are increasingly sophisticated and institutional, suggesting they may not be content to remain uninvolved as individual or single-property owners had previously done.
Hurricanes Michael and Florence are both gone, but the extent of their destruction is now coming into clearer focus.
HVS continually tracks the rates of return on the assets that we consult on. In our most recent review, we found that equity yield rates, on average, have been declining, due in part to the expectation of slowing EBITDA Less Replacement Reserve growth. The sample size of available data is also a contributing factor.
It's nothing new to hear about hotels or owners who have said "good bye" to brands and have gone on their own as an independent hotel. This is the story of one such hotel and a look at their results. I am also going to highlight the typical costs associated with being affiliated with a brand and what some say is the biggest reason to get out while you can.
Vacation Rental Channel Management Programs have come a long way. Still, some have a ways to go.
This article focuses on specific market analysis and data applicable to the development and operation of dual-branded hotels. Much has been written about the dual-brand concept over the last several years, particularly related to the asset type's benefits and challenges. Instead of providing another such piece that rephrases the same concepts in different ways, this article will focus on data collected from our work with dual-branded hotels over the last several years. While a review of the history of dual-branded hotels and some basic concepts are necessary, this article will hope to provide new data and prove, or disprove, some commonly accepted themes related to dual-branded hotels in the United States.
In recent years, the global hospitality industry has done its part to confirm the adage that necessity is the mother of invention. Shifting tides of taste and technology have re-shaped what people want and expect from a hotel stay.
As the pace of revenue growth continues to decelerate for U.S. hotels, the capability of hotel operators to control costs will determine the ability of a property to increase profits from year to year. According to the 2018 edition of Trends® in the Hotel Industry, total operating revenue increased by just 2.0 percent in 2017 for the average hotel in the survey sample. Fortunately, by limiting the growth in operating expenses to 1.9 percent, managers at the Trends® properties realized an increase in gross operating profits (GOP) for the year.
In hotel management agreements, hotel chains and owners regularly negotiate what is referred to in the industry as key money. This is the case when competing hotel chains invited to tender by owners are prepared to invest significantly in the long-term management of high-end properties considered strategic for their development. Often considered as proof of a hotel operator's genuine interest in managing a specific property, key money can be a valuable resource enabling a hotel chain to expand on new markets and in strategic locations, without having to allocate significant costs to such development. The brand is thus able to invest in a selected hotel, transforming it into a flagship property.
It was the spring of 1995 and I had recently transferred from one hotel back to the regional base and into a newly created position as the regional operations analyst. The job was tailor-made for me. The position was the brain child of our regional vice president. I was to assist him in the review of operational financial performance for the hotels in our region. In the year that followed I learned so many valuable lessons from our work and his experience, style and, above all else, his common sense.
The U.S. has been hit with the longest streak of crises—mass shootings, natural disasters and security breaches—in the past decade. Hoteliers need to better prepare and develop plans for not if, but when crises strike.
When investing in hotels, recent year-over-year trends in revenues and profits, along with current performance values, are two of the metrics most frequently evaluated. Investors need to balance the current levels of a property's occupancy, ADR, revenues and profits, with the recent direction of the changes in these measurements. In an attempt to time the market, some people prefer to invest in hotels that are currently achieving low levels of revenues and profits, but are coming out of the bottom of the cycle and achieving strong gains on the top and bottom lines. Others prefer hotels that have are approaching, or are achieving, peak levels of performance.