Ithaca, NY – A team of three students from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration won first place in the International Hotel Investment Forum (IHIF) Student Challenge – Developing the Future, held Tuesday, March 4 in Berlin, Germany.

Team members Tyler Shine, David Weinstein, and Tom Jaeger represented the Center for Real Estate and Finance (CREF) and presented a spot-on analysis of a hotel redevelopment and investment project, according to Dan Quan, professor of real estate and director of CREF, who coached the Cornell team.

"I'm incredibly proud of the students who competed in the IHIF Student Challenge this year," said Quan. "Working together, they drew on all the skills they've learned in and out of the classroom."

Acting as consultants for a fictional investment firm, each team in the competition developed a strategy to reposition the hotel, calculated costs, and outlined prospective financial statements. Each team had eight minutes to present their analysis and ten minutes to answer questions from the panel of seven judges, all senior-level industry executives. Other participating teams were from Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne and NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences.

About the Center for Real Estate and Finance

Established in 2009, the Center for Real Estate and Finance provides a platform for educating students, creating new knowledge through research activities, and exchanging information about real estate and finance with a broad set of audiences. CREF is at the forefront of research in all areas of commercial real estate, from the study of the behavior of real estate assets in investment portfolios to an understanding of real estate capital markets to the science of hedging real estate risk. To learn more about CREF, visit .

CREF Industry Fellows: Atlantic & Pacific Companies • Caribbean Property Group • Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group • Crescent Heights • Grove International Partners • Hersha Hospitality Trust • Hilton Worldwide • Hudson Bay Company • HVS • IHG • Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels • LaSalle Hotel Properties • Marriott International • Prudential Real Estate Investors • PWC • Real Capital Analytics • RLJ Lodging Trust • Sawyer Realty Holdings • Starwood Capital Group • Stonebridge Companies • Sunstone Hotel Investors • The Chartres Lodging Group • The Mega Company • W Holdings • Watermark Capital Partners, LLC • Wells Fargo • Westbrook Partners • Wyndham Hotel Group

Jane Henion
Center for Real and Estate Finance
607.254.8987
Cornell