AVR Realty and investor partner Dimension Hospitality unloaded two Marriott-branded hotels near Truist Park for $66 million. The sale includes the 400-room Atlanta Marriott Northwest at Galleria and the adjacent 147-room SpringHill Suites Atlanta Northwest.

The two hotels are less than a mile from the Atlanta Braves ballpark. Morning Star Hotel Group Greensboro, North Carolina, bought them. The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that they will be completely renovated in the next 18-24 months.

AVR Realty and Dimension acquired the Marriott in 2017 for $56 million. The companies secured a nearly $47 million loan from M&T Bank of New York for the acquisition, which matured last May.

AVR Realty built the SpringHill Suites next door to the Marriott, opening that hotel in 2022.

Horizon Hospitality is reported to be behind the construction of two new hotels near Emory University Midtown Hospital. Two 12-story hotels are under review on a site at West Peachtree Street and Baltimore Place in Downtown. The property was purchased in 2023 for $8.4 million.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that the hotels could bring almost 400 new hotel rooms to the market. 

One building would be branded as Hilton Worldwide’s micro-hotel brand Motto, and the other as Marriott International’s extended-stay brand TownePlace Suites.

The hotels are planned to include a sky lobby, or a hotel lobby that is on the top floor instead of the ground level. BCA-Studios is the architect.

The property is across the Downtown Connector from the city’s tourism and convention hub and south of Midtown’s walkable heart. Centennial Yards, the project to remake The Gulch, has three hotels either under construction or in the planning phase.

Starwood Capital Group, Crescent Real Estate LLC and High Street Real Estate Partners completed the sale of the 1 Hotel and Embassy Suites in Nashville, Tennessee, to Host Hotels and Resorts, a lodging real estate investment trust. Numerous sources reported the sales price exceeded $500 million.

Opened in 2022, the dual-branded Nashville 1 Hotel and Embassy Suites consists of an 18-story 1 Hotel—Starwood Capital’s brand hotel—and a 30-story Embassy Suites by Hilton hotel tower. The development totals 721 rooms and more than 26,000 square feet of meeting space, including guest amenities such as the 1 Hotel’s spa, rooftop bar and event deck area and Embassy Suites by Hilton’s rooftop swimming pool, bar and event space.

Located on the corner of Demonbreun Street and 7^th Avenue South, directly across from Nashville’s Music City Center, the site is in the heart of Nashville’s downtown restaurants and entertainment venues and one block from Bridgestone Arena, home of the Nashville Predators, and host to numerous concerts and events.

Ashford Hospitality Trust is looking to raise capital by selling off some assets. Five of those properties are in Georgia. One is the 444-room Ritz-Carlton Atlanta. The other assets at various stages of being available for sale:

• 351-room Hyatt Savannah – Savannah, GA
• 86-room Hampton Inn Lawrenceville – Lawrenceville, GA
• 90-room SpringHill Suites Kennesaw – Kennesaw, GA
• 87-room Fairfield Inn Kennesaw – Kennesaw, GA

The Company is unlikely to sell all these assets but plans to determine which assets capture the most attractive valuations and provide sufficient proceeds levels above allocated debt balances and mortgage release prices. The company is also working with lenders to refinance its loans secured by several other hotels under their umbrella.

Ashford Hospitality Trust is a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on investing predominantly in upper upscale, full-service hotels. Ashford reported total indebtedness of $3.6 billion, including $3.3 billion of variable-rate debt. At the end of 2022, the company owned 100 hotels with more than 22,300 rooms.

Waterton, a Chicago-based national real estate investor and operator, launched its new Outbound Hotels brand, a collection of locally-minded hotels offering differentiated lodging options for lifestyle travelers seeking outdoor-inspired experiences near town centers and cultural hubs.

“Outbound Hotels expands the traditional hospitality model,” said David Schwartz, CEO and chairman of Waterton. “Our portfolio of hotel properties creates lifestyle-oriented lodging options in destinations that provide year-round opportunities to connect adventure-minded visitors and locals to the outdoors.

Waterton partnered with Argosy Real Estate Partners to bring its repositioning acumen to a 17-acre Qualified Opportunity Zone site in Oakhurst, California, just south of Yosemite National Park. The property will be developed as Outbound Yosemite Resort, a 135-key outdoor-inspired lifestyle hotel. Outbound Hotels-branded property is a place for travelers to disconnect so they can reconnect with nature and offers an alternative lodging option that embraces its surroundings.

Photo credit: Waterton

Courtesy of White Lodging

The Austin Marriott Downtown, which White Lodging opened in 2021.

White Lodging is moving forward with its plan to entirely offload its assets in suburban markets. The Indiana-based company, which owns, develops and manages hotels across the country, announced it closed on an agreement to sell 25 management contracts for suburban locations. 

The company also plans individual hotel sell-offs, but it did not provide details of those sales beyond noting that the transition would occur over multiple years. Jettisoning its suburban properties “focuses the company’s resources across a concentrated urban portfolio with more complex hotels that deliver memorable and elevated guest experiences,” according to a statement from White Lodging.

That portfolio includes hotels in Indianapolis, Austin, Chicago, Denver, Nashville and Charlotte.

“This strategic portfolio shift further defines our position in the industry and reinforces our focus on urban luxury and lifestyle hotels with independent destination restaurants,” White Lodging Chairman and founder Bruce White said in a statement.

Luxury hotels, while not seeing pre-pandemic occupancy rates, are receiving a boost in room rates, STR data comparing February 2019 and the same month in 2022 showed. While occupancy was almost 20% less than it was prior to the pandemic, rooms were charging an increase of almost 30% over pre-pandemic rates. 

White Lodging’s announcement emphasized that, moving forward, the bars and restaurants in the hotels will be a critical part of its targeted focus on urban markets. 

Hotels catering to domestic leisure clientele are doing well now, and that includes both urban leisure travelers and city dwellers looking for a place to have a good meal or drink, JLL Hotels and Hospitality Global CEO Gilda Perez-Alvarado told Bisnow in December. 

“A lot of these hotels have discovered that maybe they don’t need to rely on the guest who’s staying there overnight, they can rely on the resident or the neighbor who wants to go eat at the hotel or have a beverage at the hotel,” Perez-Alvarado said. “Hotels are being redefined finally as living places, not just staying places.” 

Last year, White Lodging opened four new urban hotels with nine food and beverage offerings in Charlotte, San Antonio and Austin.