Atlas in the news
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Experts hope for a quick recovery for LA’s tourism economy
Michelle Lhooq | BloombergPublished 11:03 a.m. ET Feb. 17, 2025 On a rainy afternoon in early February, Hodari Sababu, the cowboy-hat-donning owner of LA Hood Life Tours, isn’t running his usual assortment of van excursions to hip-hop and Hollywood landmarks. “People are scared to come to LA right now,” he says, seated at a booth on Hollywood Boulevard. He adds that his small business has lost $12,000 because of customer no-shows, cancellations and refunds since Jan. 7, when wildfires first broke out across Los Angeles, eventually burning through 40,000 acres and killing 29 people. Normally, it would already be a slow month for Sababu, with low season running from January to March. That makes any additional hit to business difficult to absorb in the short term. But the tour operator is among a large number of local travel industry professionals who are predicting that this month’s anomalies will soon give way to a quick travel recovery citywide. Puffing a cigar and twirling a toy water gun, he says, “Come spring break, we hope to be busy again.” Almost a dozen hoteliers, tourism operators and analysts who spoke to Bloomberg shared an equally bullish outlook on LA’s travel recovery, thanks in…
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Gaw Capital Defaults on $100M Loan Tied to California Hotel
2025/02/16 by Christopher Caillavet Gaw acquired the Oakland Marriott City Center in 2017 (Image: Gaw Capital Partners) A vehicle managed by Hong Kong’s Gaw Capital Partners has defaulted on a $100 million loan linked to a 500-room California hotel, according to a local media account citing official records. Fund manager Gaw purchased the Oakland Marriott City Center in the Golden State’s Bay Area for $143 million in 2017. Invesco CMI Investments bought the hotel’s loan last May and now could look to seize the 1983-vintage property next to Oakland’s convention centre, the East Bay Times reported. The delinquent loan marks the latest setback for Gaw on the US West Coast, where the privately held firm sold the nearby Courtyard Oakland Downtown hotel last year at a 76 percent haircut and saw an Oregon commercial building fall into receivership in 2023. “You are going to see more hotels fall into default,” Alan Reay, president of market tracker Atlas Hospitality Group, told the East Bay Times. “There is a disconnect between what sellers and buyers of hotels expect the price should be. There is going to be an adjustment in pricing.” Golden State Worriers When Gaw acquired the Oakland Marriott City Center almost eight years ago, from a joint venture of…
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Big Oakland hotel flops into loan default as local lodging woes widen
Hotel highrise is an Oakland landmark By George Avalos | gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group UPDATED: February 13, 2025 at 3:44 PM PST OAKLAND — A big highrise hotel in downtown Oakland has tumbled into default on a delinquent loan, fresh evidence of a feeble lodging market in the Bay Area. The Oakland Marriott City Center hotel next to the East Bay city’s convention center is in default on its loan, documents filed on Feb. 11 with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office show. The delinquent loan totals $100 million, the county real estate files show. The 500-room Oakland Marriott City Center is the East Bay’s largest hotel. The lodging tower is at 1001 Broadway next to 11th Street. Invesco CMI Investments filed the default against the hotel. Invesco CMI bought the hotel’s loan in May 2024 and now could foreclose on the landmark if the delinquency isn’t cured. Hong Kong-based Gaw Capital bought the big downtown Oakland hotel via an affiliate in 2017 for $143 million. The hotel is deemed to be a crucial piece of Oakland’s economic and lodging mosaic. The financial woes that have engulfed the Oakland City Center Marriott are the latest indicator of ailments for the Bay Area lodging sector…
Oakland Marriott City Center hotel defaults on $100 million loan
By Alex Barreira – Staff Reporter, San Francisco Business Times | Feb 12, 2025 Updated Feb 12, 2025 4:27pm PST Oakland’s largest hotel, the 500-room Oakland Marriott City Center, has defaulted on a $100 million loan according to public records. The hotel’s debt troubles arrive as the latest sign of serious distress and plunging values of Oakland hospitality assets. The timing this week is especially awkward: Oakland is preparing for its highest-profile hosting gig in years with events associated with NBA All-Star Weekend. And the Marriott City Center itself just opened its newly renovated facility for the WNBA Golden State Valkyries. The borrower, an affiliate of Gaw Capital Partners, took out an $80 million loan from the the New York branch of French banking giant Natixis in 2017 and upped the loan to $100 million in 2019, per public records. Gaw Capital Partners bought the full-service hotel in 2017 for a total purchase price of $143 million. Gaw Capital USA, an affiliate of Gaw Capital Partners, did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. A default could act as a motivating factor in refinancing or disposition talks. Or it could act as the first visible sign of an impending foreclosure should the owner be unable…
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Hyatt Regency Sonoma Wine Country sold to Brookfield Properties
By Alex Barreira – Staff Reporter, San Francisco Business Times Feb 11, 2025 Global developer and investor Brookfield Properties has acquired the 253-room Hyatt Regency Sonoma Wine Country hotel in Santa Rosa for $55 million. The seller, the United Overseas Bank Ltd., New York Agency, completed the deal Nov. 22 according to property records. It was the North Bay’s most expensive hotel transaction of 2024, according to county-level data from Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality. The Hyatt Regency Sonoma Wine Country changed hands for roughly $217,391 per key. That number, calculated from the price of the real property in public records, may be slightly lower than the actual sale price when factoring in goodwill costs and other intangibles priced into the deal. The hotel was built in 2002 and last renovated in 2018. After the 2017 Tubbs Fire destroyed area hotels including the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country and Fountaingrove Inn, the Hyatt Regency quickly added 89 rooms. The buyer was a Delaware LLC, Brookfield US 2 Real Estate Sub LLC, whose mailing address is listed in public records as in care of Brookfield Properties at its New York headquarters. Brookfield affiliates last made a splash in the Bay Area hotel scene with its acquisition of Chicago REIT Watermark Lodging…
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California hotel sales decline in 2024, but not as much as a year earlier
The most expensive hotel transaction last year in the North Bay was the Hyatt Regency Santa Rosa, which sold for $55 million, according to Atlas Hospitality Group. CHERYL SARFATY | THE NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL | February 10, 2025, 11:59AM Hotel sales across California last year proved anything but robust, the result of persistent economic pressures driven by higher financing and increased operational expenses, particularly in insurance and labor, according to a new industry report. Still, 2024 delivered some year-over-year hope. Individual hotel sales across the state last year declined by 6.4% — significantly better than the 45% drop that closed out 2023, according to Atlas Hospitality Group’s newly released 2024 Year-End California Hotel Sales Survey. Total dollar volume of sales last year was down 10.4%, compared to a decline of 56.3% a year prior, according to Newport Beach-based Atlas. Even these improvements, however, don’t bring expectations for a full rebound anytime soon. “Looking ahead (in) 2025, hotel owners are unlikely to see significant relief,” Alan X. Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality, stated in the report. “With interest rates remaining high, lenders exercising caution in their lending practices and inflation outpacing revenue growth, the challenges for hotel owners are expected…
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SD’s hotel market looks a lot stronger than other parts of the state
By Thor Kamban Biberman | Tuesday, February 4, 2025 San Diego County’s hotel market is far from perfect, but it looked considerably better than some other areas of the state in 2024, according to Atlas Hospitality Group. Atlas Hospitality Group President Alan Reay, who has seen hotel values collapse in some places by as much as two-thirds in recent years, said there are 357 hotels in the state that are on a watch list for potential trouble. Of those, 43 have loans that are delinquent. However, San Diego “doesn’t have any hotels that are on a watch list,” Reay said. While the Atlas Hospitality report didn’t cite any distressed sales here, the hospitality industry watcher said the most expensive “sale” in California involved the 686-room Hyatt Regency in downtown San Francisco, which was transferred back to the lender via a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure for $290 million. In San Diego County, individual sales dropped by 19 percent last year, but the total dollar sales volume rose by 35 percent in 2024 as the median price-per-room increased 13 percent. The hotel with the largest sale price in San Diego County last year was the 394-room Hilton La Jolla in Torrey Pines, which…
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CoStar Insight
US hotel rooms in construction show no sign of acceleration Total pipeline shows additional activity, but financing remains the sticking point By Jan Freitag | CoStar Analytics | February 5, 2025 | 7:17 AM The higher interest rate environment continues to keep U.S. hotel development in check. In 2024, the quarterly average number of hotel rooms in construction was roughly 156,000. This compares to the quarterly average of around 151,000 rooms in 2023 and around 155,000 rooms in 2022. In the much lower interest rate environment of 2019, the average quarterly count stood at around 201,000 rooms. Smaller construction counts lead to below-average supply growth. Last year, U.S. hotel supply grew by 0.5%, a low growth rate compared to the long-run average of 1.6%. This follows 0.2% supply growth in 2023 and a 1.7% change in 2022. However, It is likely that the 2022 increase was still slightly elevated by a combination of opening hotels that started construction pre-pandemic and reopening of some properties that were closed during the pandemic. The total active pipeline, including all hotel rooms in planning, final planning, and construction, hit an all-time high of around 789,000 rooms in the last quarter of 2024. This total is…
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California hotel deals environment ‘reflects disconnect’ between buyers and sellers
2024 full-year dollar volume down 10.4% compared to 2023 Shown here is the 686-key Hyatt Regency San Francisco Downtown SoMa, which transferred via deed-in-lieu back to the lender for $290 million last year. The transaction, valued at $290 million, was California’s largest for 2024. (Hyatt Hotels Corp.) By Natalie Harms | Hotel News Now | February 5, 2025 | 6:26 AM California hotel owners faced another tough year in 2024, with hotel deal dollar volume dropping 10.4% — the fourth lowest it’s been in the past 15 years, according to a year-end survey. The number of individual hotel sales dropped by 6.4% year over year as well. The California Hotel Sales Survey 2024 Year-End reports roughly $3.36 billion in hotel deals in the state last year, down from $3.75 billion in 2023. The number of sales fell from 265 to 248 in 2024. Atlas Hospitality Group President Alan Reay said that when a big decline in the number of sales transactions happens — like the market saw in 2023 primarily due to the rise of interest rates — a decline in median price for room usually follows. However, even in light of the state’s decreased number of sales and decline in…
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Woodland building more hotels, bucking a statewide trend
Two new hotels under construction in Woodland on East Main Street are Home2Suites, which has 85 rooms, as well as Courtyard, which has 109 rooms. (Jim Smith/Courtesy) By Jim Smith | jsmith@dailydemocrat.com and George Avalos | gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group UPDATED: January 31, 2025 at 7:03 AM PST Hotel development nosedived in California in 2024, fresh evidence the statewide lodging market may still be affected by economic conditions following a global pandemic, a new report shows. However, that isn’t true in Woodland, which has seen the opening and construction of new hotels over the past several years. The Atlas Hospitality Group disclosed in a report this month that the decline involved three types of hotel projects: those being planned, those under construction, and new openings. In 2024, developers completed and opened just three hotels in the Bay Area, according to the Hospitality Group, a plunge of 75% from the 12 hotels that opened in 2023. The hotels that opened in 2024 in the Bay Area had a combined total of 348 rooms. That was down 78.4% from the 1,615 hotel rooms that were opened in the nine-county region in 2023. Northern California, meanwhile, added 18 new hotels with 1,849 hotel rooms in 2024. That number was down…
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After the smoke clears: What the California wildfires mean for real estate
By Patricia Kirk Jan 27, 2025 8:00am As Los Angeles County fires swept through local communities, hotels and restaurants cast a lifeline to rescue workers and residents displaced by towering infernos that have already resulted in 28 deaths and leveled large swaths of the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, Malibu, Brentwood and Topanga. Local Hoteliers and Restaurateurs Offer Helping Hand Many hotels are providing free stays or discounted rates for fire victims, and restaurants and food trucks throughout the region offer free meals for first responders and evacuees. (See lists in Los Angeles Times.) “Everybody in this industry is trying to be helpful,” said Jackie Filla, president/CEO of the Hotel Association of Los Angeles. She noted, for instance, that Hilton Hotels and Airbnb are providing free temporary stays for fire victims through LA211, an online community service resource that connects local residents with needed services. Hilton for example, is providing up to 20 free room stays or seven nights for individuals and families, she added, noting that hotels also are serving as collection sites for donated items, such as clothing and household items needed by people who lost everything to start over. “Bridge programs like that are going to be really helpful as we move into transition,…
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New San Diego hotel openings fall to slowest level in more than a decade
New construction, though, has picked up as pandemic-delayed projects move forward, from Coronado to Carlsbad By Lori Weisberg | The San Diego Union-Tribune UPDATED: January 22, 2025 at 4:37 PM PST San Diego County’s hotel openings last year dropped to their lowest level in recent history, with just one property — in Chula Vista — making its debut in 2024. The decline in new inventory is a trend being repeated statewide, according to a new year-end report released this month showing that 2024 marked the slowest pace of openings since 2014. The lone hotel opening last year was the 179-room SpringHill Suites Chula Vista Eastlake. While new lodging inventory has clearly slowed, hotel construction in San Diego picked up considerably last year, following a plateauing trend over the last few years. In all, 13 hotels, accounting for 2,799 rooms — from Carlsbad to Jamul — were under construction in 2024, reported Orange County brokerage firm, Atlas Hospitality Group. Just a year earlier, only six hotels were in the construction phase. Similarly, construction activity rose across the state, with 125 hotels representing nearly 16,500 rooms reported to be in some phase of construction. That’s still significantly less than the 23,451 new rooms in 168…
