Hotels & Leisure

The Hotels & Leisure group comprises a highly sophisticated international practice primarily representing hotel owners in effecting acquisitions and mergers, developing and rebranding their properties, structuring joint ventures, negotiating management agreements, arranging financing, establishing fractional ownership and handling virtually every other aspect of hotel ownership and operations including, when necessary, litigation.

Our group is distinguished by the depth and geographic breadth of its experience. Since 1995, we have assisted clients with individual property and portfolio transactions involving more than 80 upscale, luxury and super-luxury hotels and resorts throughout North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Australia, with an aggregate value in the billions of dollars. We have represented owners in their dealings with almost all of the major worldwide hotel brands.

We work with our clients to acquire hotels on the right terms, manage the assets efficiently, finance and refinance them opportunistically, and sell or joint venture them on favorable terms. We also have substantial experience guiding owners as they negotiate long-term management agreements that affect the value of their properties and the ability to market and finance their hotels. We have extensive knowledge in dealing with asset management issues that commonly arise between hotel owners and managers, such as the treatment of rebates and allowances, centralized services chargebacks and similar items.

Financing issues in hotel transactions raise significant complexities. We have negotiated the placement of corporate debt, the issuance of mortgage-backed securities, structured international financing and traditional property-level secured debt. We understand how to work with owners, lenders and management companies to get deals done while addressing the concerns of all relevant parties.

Our exposure to different brands and types of transactions enables us to offer our clients a deep understanding of the issues they face and the business sense that is relevant to the particular types of transactions in this industry. We have an excellent sense of market terms that arise with transactions, as well as in-depth knowledge of operating and liquidity issues that arise with hotels. We can help our clients structure incentives properly so that the interests of all parties in a hotel transaction are properly aligned, maximizing the value and marketability of the hotel.