Articles tagged “starwood capital”

Investors like Barry Sternlicht tout the hotel industry as an opportunistic place to park capital during the travel recovery. But discounts aren’t coming in as steep as some hoped thanks to Uncle Sam and forgiving lenders.

The U.S. hotel sector is performing relatively well this summer, but there is too much uncertainty heading into fall in cities that rely on business travelers. Hotel companies shouldn’t take a few months of strong performance as a signal to reintroduce brand standards and costly renovation mandates.

Extended Stay America's launch of a higher-end brand isn't the sign of new owners Blackstone and Starwood Capital wanting some grandiose push into the upscale sector. It's about appealing to a segment of business travelers who may not have considered the brand as an option in the past.

Nothing in life (and business) is fair. Soho House is able to expand at lower development costs with a special landlord-tenant relationship unavailable to the average mom-and-pop company.

Blackstone and Starwood Capital's approved takeover of Extended Stay America is a major win for investors who have been salivating over any kinda of mega-hotel deal coming out of the pandemic. But the turbulent road to the finish line shows shareholders are still not going to accept lowball offers.

Blackstone and Starwood Capital blinked, bowing to critics on what they deemed a lowball offer for Extended Stay America.

Lifestyle hotels come in many forms, with some focused more on the hip and trendy while, others like Hilton see it as an opportunity to scale up more experiential and food-focused properties around the world. Long story short: we still don't have a textbook definition for what a lifestyle hotel actually is.

Extended Stay America's significant hotel ownership, an industry anomaly these days, drove it to sell, or at least that was the C-suite argument. Buildings are getting old and need a lot of money to renovate. Major shareholders aren't buying that argument.

Blackstone and Starwood Capital keep returning to Extended Stay America, but their partnership acquisition here shows the two firms see many more deals ahead as reason to keep capital on hand.

It's nearly time for opportunistic investors like Starwood Capital's Barry Sternlicht to swoop in on distressed hotel assets, but they'd better have the pockets to stomach at least another year of no returns on investment.