NEW YORK — Interest rate increases, the higher cost of debt and possibilities of a recession are factoring in to the overall hotel investment landscape, but the industry’s continuing strong performance metrics have investors confident in a more normalized playing field in the near future.
Hotel investors on a panel covering economic trends at the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference all said the U.S. economy isn’t necessarily behaving in typical ways right now, but the factors driving hotel demand are making up for interest rate and inflation woes.
The May announcement that private equity investor Brookfield Asset Management would acquire non-traded real estate investment trust Watermark Lodging Trust’s 25-hotel portfolio for $3.8 billion all cash represented “a good read-through of the market and how investors are thinking about the world today,” said Michael Bluhm, managing director and global head of gaming and lodging for Morgan Stanley…