hotels articles

Carlton Advisory Services’ chairman Howard L. Michaels announced that the Canton Equity Exchange has been exclusively engaged to line up an institutional capital partner to co-invest with Thompson Hotels, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Pomeranc Group, to opportunistically acquire approximately $200 million of boutique hotel properties.

Thompson Hotels is sponsoring the partnership to pursue opportunistic acquisitions of properties located in New York, Miami, Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and London that are suitable for the acquisition, redevelopment, and operation of boutique hotels. Additionally, the partnership will facilitate the arrangement of hotel management contracts and joint ventures as a way to further expand into select markets and generate additional fee income. Carlton executives Jason Cohen and Marc Sznajderman will be assisting Michaels with the execution of this assignment.

The West Hollywood Wyndham Bel Age has an unusual New Year’s resolution: getting people to remember its new name.

The Bel Age will soon be called London LA–one of two locations that owner LXR Luxury Resorts is opening that may form the cornerstone of a new hotel brand.

The change comes with a remodel that will be completed in two stages, so that the property can remain open. “The Bel Age is going to get a pretty comprehensive overhaul,” said Amy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the hotel.

Irish designer David Collins has been hired to transform interiors of the guest rooms and public spaces, while Gordon Ramsay, the British chef of Fox Broadcasting Co.’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” will open two restaurants at the London LA.

Another Ramsay-headed restaurant and bar will open at London NYC, the new name of the existing Rihga Royal Hotel in New York. Like the Bel Age, the Rihga is an all-suites hotel that will be getting a substantial makeover.

The London locations are part of LXR’s 23-hotel portfolio, which is owned by the Blackstone Group, the giant private equity firm. The Group purchased Wyndham International last year in a deal valued at $3.24 billion.

The London LA remodel is expected to be finished in spring 2007, while the remodel of the London NYC should be completed next fall.

With demolitions complete and piling under way, work is progressing on site to create the UK’s highest living space. The 48-storey building designed by Manchester-based Ian Simpson Architects, will include over 200 skyline apartments and a 285-room five-star Hilton Hotel.

Following the podium-and-tower model, 45 floors of accommodation will sit on a three-storey base, which will in turn define a new piazza and contain lobbies and publicly accessible hotel facilities. Surrounded predominantly by four- and five-storey Victorian buildings, this new landmark tower will force Manchester to address the debate that continues in London concerning the distribution of towers within historic city centres (AR March). However, when describing his plans, Simpson underlines his committed belief that beautifully designed tall buildings can enhance historic contexts, predicting that with relatively narrow residential floor-plates, elegant slender towers will improve people’s perceptions when seen in contrast to earlier and more bulky office developments.

The envelope of the 156m-high glass tower will be a fully sealed, modular, glazed curtain walling system, including silk-screened fritting and an insulated ’shadow box’ effect. Designed to emphasize the building’s verticality, horizontal joints have been minimized, metal panels and projecting shading fins run across a number of floors, and each elevation is orientation specific, adding richness and individuality to the proposals. South-facing apartments are protected by a glazed buffer zone, a development of No 1 Deansgate (AR February), which allows occupants to inhabit protected external spaces with spectacular views across the city and the surrounding countryside. At level 23, the tower cantilevers, accommodating a publicly accessible sky-bar that separates private residences from hotel rooms. This dramatic formal move is then balanced by the rooftop crystalline blade, which, as an extrusion of the louvred facade, clearly demonstrates Simpson’s keen desire to articulate Manchester’s skyline, reminiscent perhaps of his wilful, but nevertheless distinctive, copper spike that crowns his building at Urbis (AR April 2000).

In February 2004, the Tampa Police Department faced a risk management challenge, one that required pre-event security assessments, security planning and event security management for 300,000 visitors descending on the city.

In short, Tampa was hosting the 100th anniversary of its annual Gasparilla Pirate Fest, a weeklong celebration that included events on both land and sea. Gasparilla, which amounts to $22 million in economic benefits for Tampa, is also an enormous potential headache for the TPD, relative to a possible terrorist attack or other security-based disruption.

“This year’s (2004) Gasparilla was particularly eventful, as it marked the 100th anniversary of the celebration–security was of the utmost concern,” says Doug Pasley, Tampa’s master police chief.

Looking for help, the TPD turned to a relatively new type of risk management software application that allowed the department to secure the festival’s sprawling geographic area, tried to ensure attendee protection, and considered precautions associated with the elevated risk status declared by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at the time.

To do those things, the TPD used Site Profiler, a Web-based software application from Digital Sandbox, a Reston, Va., enterprise risk management software vendor.

With Site Profiler, which carries $250,000 price tag, any user can look out over a representation of a city (or any physical asset or group of assets, for that matter) and try to get inside the mind of a terrorist.

For example, with just a few keystrokes a user can “set off” a bomb at a crowded stadium, office building or hotel–and learn about the horrific consequences. More importantly, Site Profiler can redeploy security measures to maximize the resources risk managers have to work with.

So far, outside of several federal government agencies, the software as of last year had only been used by two clients, the City of Tampa and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bistate agency.

In Tampa’s case, the city obtained Site Profiler in November 2003, using it to link the police department with the mayor’s office, as well as the city’s strategic planning and technology departments.

Pasley says that once the data was downloaded, Site Profiler offered a three-dimensional model of Tampa, helping the TPD make decisions about where to deploy personnel.

The model included every street, bridge, waterway, park and major public building, including Tampa City Hall, Tampa General Hospital and Raymond James Stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team.

The only sure thing about underwriting contingent business interruption risks in today’s fast-paced business climate is that it’s all about unknowns.

And in a global economy with heightened productivity demands, more frequent outsourcing and intricate manufacturing supply chains, the job of the commercial property underwriter handling this complex risk isn’t getting any easier. Insurers frequently find themselves groping for basics–such as corporate names, locations and other rudimentary details–when they try to write this cover for their corporate clients.

“It gives everybody nightmares,” says Jamie Miller, senior vice president and chief property underwriter for the Americas at XL Insurance America in Stamford, Conn., referring to contingency risks that are not scheduled. That means the insured’s suppliers are not identified on the policy. “It’s a crap shoot and you don’t know exactly what you are underwriting.”

Unlike the traditional business interruption coverage that is part of a commercial property policy and contains the soothing specifies that underwriters crave, contingent business interruption cover heads out into unknown territory. It covers corporations against some of the same named perils–such as fire or earthquake–that can force a company to lose income and file a business interruption claim. The so-called CBI coverage goes a step further and covers a corporation for the loss of income that stems from business interruption losses suffered by its suppliers. An auto manufacturer, for example, may have to temporarily shut down its manufacturing plant if its seat belt supplier experiences a fire at its production facility and can’t ship the seat belts.

CBI cover also protects a corporation against income losses incurred if a major customer experiences a damaging fire, for example, and is temporarily out of business and can no longer buy the corporation’s products, be it cars, refrigerators or semi-conductors. But since the risk manager of a corporation can usually identify its customers, underwriters don’t worry too much about this contingency risk. It is the risks associated with suppliers–especially the unnamed suppliers that are labeled “unscheduled risks” or “an unnamed contingent time element”–that can cause sleepless nights.

“The supplier usually is not named and the risk manager isn’t aware of all suppliers,” says Robert Bean, senior vice president of underwriting and reinsurance at FM Global in Johnston, R.I. “The risk manager could identify key suppliers, but it can be time-consuming and changes over time.”

And the void doesn’t end with unnamed suppliers operating in unspecified locations that may be halfway around the planet. Underwriters and their fussy engineering staffs may be in the dark about the quality of construction of the supplier’s manufacturing facility. And they may not know anything about the supplier’s commercial property insurance coverage and whether it includes adequate business interruption limits that will let the supplier absorb the loss and get back to work turning out the seat belts, for example, for the U.S. auto manufacturer.

“Not only may I not be able to name the location, but I also can’t tell in precise terms what the construction standards were for the supplier’s manufacturing site, what the building is made of and how it is protected against potential losses,” says John Gallagher, senior vice president of global property, at Ace USA Global Property in Philadelphia.

With tenant vacancies up, tenant retention has become just as important as building security for today’s third-party property manager. In order to achieve the commercial property owner’s proforma leasing goals and financial objectives, “tenant retention” has become the key.

One of the ways that OVA Williams has chosen to effectively retain its tenants is through improved tenant communications utilizing state of the art technology via Internet-based Tenant Response Software (TRS).

Before property management companies had Internet technology, the planning, management and administrative procedures required to manage a portfolio of millions of SF of commercial office building space was a manual process. Property management will always be a challenging proposition, but now with Internet-based software it is a highly manageable one.

Organizing property information, planning staff activities and reports, responding to tenant requests, creating and tracking PM work orders, inventory replacement and controlling equipment maintenance costs is time consuming, given the extensive amount of documentation involved. At GVA Williams we now use computerized tenant requests and preventive maintenance management software to organize and centralize maintenance activities and expedite tenant requests.

Our Internet-based software documents property information and engineering staff activities and improves performance by reducing equipment downtime, repair costs and reporting time. Selecting the right TRS service provider is the key to efficiently managing real estate portfolios–of any size.

Software programs to monitor maintenance, repair and operating applications is not new to sophisticated property management companies. Early software programs kept track of equipment and parts and, when a change or repair was needed, the program created a purchase order that could be faxed or phoned to a supplier. As technology advanced, service providers began developing internet-based programs that could manage and maintain buildings as well as control preventive maintenance. The next logical step was to develop a better more immediate way to service tenant requests.

Since the Internet connects the world in an instant, it makes sense to use the Web to connect tenants to property managers for emergency and standard requests. We have found that our project management portfolio receives tremendous benefits by using an Internet-based system to manage facility operations. At GVA Williams, we manage a portfolio of about 20 million SF and our tenant request software has improved our ability to manage workflow between properties, management staff, tenants and owners. This software approach has allowed us to establish benchmarks for our managed properties and makes us more effective at delivering services to our clients. The bottom line is that improved tenant communications has resulted in improved tenant retention.

As real estate markets soften, landlords and professional property managers focus their attention on retaining tenants, preserving asset value and keeping a close eye on financial performance. To meet those obligations property managers today rely on advanced technological systems and reporting capabilities.

In New York City, for example, at the end of September the overll vacancy rate for Manhattan stood at 11.8%. Since then, even more vacancies have been reported as a result of additional layoffs.

This has encouraged successful real estate services firms to apply sophisticated programs to better manage portfolios. The new technologies are comprehensive, increase efficiency, reduce unnecessary expenses arid increase profit. And they couldn’t be available at a more opportune time; namely, when property management is in the spotlight.

Cushman & Wakefield offers clients Big-e-Realestate, Inc., in which the firm has an ownership position, to tackle property management challenges and add positive results. The web-based property management technology developed by Big-e-Realestate, based in Tempe, Ariz, not only creates a platform for efficient management, but it is accessible to owners, space users and service providers around the clock.

The primary areas where the technology shines are the keys to successful property management The technology addresses lease administration, asset value, space- and project-management, and timely financial reporting, in a single database. The database creates an open, constant line of communication between tenants, management and landlords, while tracking lease data, space data, work management, transaction information and project related data.

In terms of tenant retention, Big-e-Realestate provides automated responses to tenant requests. The technology revolves around its database, but is enhanced by a 24×7 call center that logs tenant calls, automatically creates and closes work orders and notifies the tenant when their request has been completed. Nothing maximizes efficiency more than automated organization and management that enables asset management professionals to focus on the highest priorities, while at the same time, maintaining maximum responsiveness to tenants.

In connection with its call center, Big-e-Realestate’s primary tool is its comprehensive database. It allows for the organization and automatic update of several key cost saving systems. One system allows for preventive and periodic maintenance notifications, another tracks tenant changes and moves, and a project management module tracks new construction from start to finish.

Since the entire technology is available by a standard Internet browser, it can be accessed anytime by owners or property managers. This makes for seamless communication between property managers and clients, a key to keeping landlords thoroughly informed with detailed information anytime, anywhere.

SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL once said, “There are no secrets to success. Don’t waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence.” The same applies to success in selling.

Other people may look at these high-sales achievers and say “They were born lucky,” “They were born talented” or “They got a great territory.” The reality is, they simply acted on the basic truths of sales. At first glance, you might brush these truths aside as cliches. But a closer look reveals that cliches become cliches because they’re true. Here are some sales truths to live by:  * DON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER. It’s been said that buyers will say no at least five times before they say yes. It takes persistence to go beyond that first no, to hang in there until the deal is closed. Remember that persistence makes up for a lot of deficiencies you may have.

* DON’T SELL THE STEAK, SELL THE SIZZLE. Selling the sizzle makes it possible for prospects to smell the steak cooking to hear the fat dripping into the fire, to see the juices running onto the plate and to taste the smoky barbecue flavor–even when there’s nothing in front of them except you. You’re not just selling the steak, you’re selling the pleasure and satisfaction that steak will bring. And it’s your spirit and enthusiasm that makes that happen. If you don’t believe in what you’re selling, how will the customer?
* THE HARDER YOU WORK, THE LUCKIER YOU GET. All the high-achievers I know tell me the secret to their success is basic–hard work. It’s doing more than is required. It’s that extra push that makes the difference, whether it’s getting new prospects, serving current customers or working with vendors. It’s always the extra effort you put in that gets you a “lucky” break.

* IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW, IT’S WHO YOU KNOW. Never underestimate the power of each person you meet. You may think someone is unimportant–but you never know how much power that person may have. Seemingly inconsequential contacts you make today may be your most important links to tomorrow’s sale. Then, of course, comes the second stage: Once a contact has gotten you through a door, it’s what you know that’s most important.

* ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. Anyone can talk a great game. It’s what you do after the talk, after the sale has gone through, and after the promises have been made. It’s follow-up and follow-through. That’s where trust, service and future business are built.

* HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY. Customers never want to hear bad news. They don’t want to hear that they have to pay extra or that delivery may take longer. But the best salespeople always tell customers the truth to ensure there are no misunderstandings later on. Customers hate bad news, but they hate unpleasant surprises even more. Honesty and integrity should be your calling cards. They’ll create a lifetime of relationships.

The salespeople who achieve the most are those who practice these basic truths. So don’t just let sales cliches go in one ear and out the other. Stop, listen and think about the nugget of truth that a cliche contains–and what that truth can mean to your sales.

One of the most difficult decisions a business owner has to make is when to sell their business. Selling a business is like a high-stakes poker game. A smart player knows when to walk away from the table, hopefully with a stash of cash. and to move on to another game. Having an experienced business intermediary on your side is the first step.

Plethora Businesses, a full-service business consulting firm headquartered in the Los Angeles area, recently expanded their presence into the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley markets. Recognizing the dynamic potential in both of these markets. Plethora is positioning their operation for long-term, relationshipbased growth. One of the agents developing the Inland Empire market is Deborah Cramer, “With the L.A. and Orange County markets nearing development saturation, the Inland Empire area is the next frontier. That is where business is headed. Business growth and the residential market expansion happen simultaneously.”

Plethora offers services that cater to both business sellers and business buyers: business valuations & appraisals, seller listings, buyer representations. strategic planning, exit strategies, business consulting, and underwriting. George Lanza, President of Plethora Businesses, manages the mergers and acquisitions side of the business. George’s wife and business partner, Dora, handles the operations the staff. Dora explains, “Plethora Businesses is a boutique firm, with a professional support staff that is knowledgeable, attentive to details and prides itself on customer service.” Both George and Dora have decades of experience in all facets of business brokerage.

Statistics show that of the tens of thousands of businesses that are for sale every day in the United States, about one in five sell. According to Robert Fahrenhorst, Project Coordinator at Plethora, a seller can increase the probability of his or her business reaching the closing table “maintaining verifiable, organized records, growing or at least maintaining sales & profit levels, reducing the business dependency on the owner, and diversifying their customer base.” Dora Lanza adds, “The seller’s personal goals must be taken into consideration and our job as professionals is to match the buyer to the business.”

Similar to other business brokers, Plethora Businesses represents owners of small and medium-sized businesses when it is time to sell. However, that is where the similarity ends. Plethora’s sales strategy is somewhat different than other business brokers. Instead of first procuring listings by marketing directly to business owners, and then hoping to find a suitable buyer, Plethora initially lines up ready, willing, and able buyers, and then seeks saleable businesses that meet the buyer’s criteria. A large percentage of businesses that Plethora lists are already sold before the business reaches the market. Pre-qualifying and consulting with the buyer first - whether the buyer is an individual looking to buy a job or a lifestyle, a strategic buyer seeking to expand and grow a business, or an investor looking for a suitable return on investment — is the key to shortening the acquisition process and ensuring the fit between the buyer and the acquisition is right. George Lanza considers the buyer fit the most important part of the transaction, “Matching the right, qualified buyer who is also willing (with investment), and able (he or she has the necessary experience). with the right business, is key. We employ specialized acquisition searches that create a qualified match between buyers and businesses that are not currently on the market.” Plethora’s database of 100+ ready. willing and able buyers, facilitates marketing to a wide cross-section of potential sellers, improving on the odds of finding a suitable acquisition.

One of the first steps in the selling process is figuring out what the business is worth. Ask ten different experts and you are likely to get ten different valuations. Plethora employs in-house, certified business appraisers for this step. Whether the task is providing a broker’s opinion of value, a small business valuation, or a certified appraisal for a larger organization, the appraisal staff at Plethora has the experience and the tools to provide an accurate valuation. Another competitive advantage is Plethora’s in-house commercial lending division. Having certified underwriters on staff greatly reduces the probability that a transaction will fall apart due to funding problems. The Plethora lending team has close ties to both the traditional commercial lending sources and the private capital markets.

A YEAR AFTER the helium plant near Amarillo, Texas, started selling the stuff to private buyers, local officials say that levies on the sales have generated enough revenue to justify a cut in tax rates. Residents can thank the Helium Privatization Act of 1996, which authorized the government to sell off its long-derided stockpile of the gas.

The Helium Reserve Program began in 1925, when the War Department longed to create a fleet of fighter blimps. The government eventually concluded that slow, melon-shaped vehicles are not well suited for warfare. Nonetheless, in 1960 the program ballooned to include refining and storage facilities, which grew to hold 32 billion cubic feet of helium.