What to Expect From U.S. Hotel Dealmaking in 2023: Trophy Sales and Trauma
Photo Caption: A swimming pool at Montage Laguna Beach. In 2022, Fertitta MLB Owner, LLC, bought the 260-unit Montage in Laguna, California for $650 million. Source: Montage.
Skift Take
The hotel industry revival is apparent everywhere except in sales volume for hotel assets. Expect the relative lack of dealmaking to continue for at least a few more months — perhaps longer.
Sales of hotel rooms are booming post-pandemic. But market turmoil will likely put most dealmaking for hotel assets on hiatus for the first half of the year.
A few exceptional bright spots for deal flow might be for large hotel groups acquiring small luxury and lifestyle brands and portfolios in popular destinations where they need to plug gaps in their networks. Deals for Dream Hotels, Viceroy, and Ace announced in the past several months suggest that some assets are recession-proof, given that those brands appear to have fetched prices similar to what they would've likely nabbed pre-pandemic.
Expect lifestyle and luxury to remain a safe haven of sorts in an uncertain first half of the 2023, according to several investment bankers and brokers at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit (ALIS) in Los Angeles.
A few factors have all but frozen significantly sized hotel transactions. Sellers are se
