25 September 2011
Hotel lawyers: Are we at a turning point in the industry?
Our hotel lawyers were at The Lodging Conference in Phoenix last week, taking the measure of the hotel industry. It was pretty interesting. Some said August was a “turning point” and they were not referring to a good thing.
At the Hotel Law Blog, what happens in Phoenix does not stay in Phoenix. Here’s what we heard.
“It’s not just me. The market has changed in just the last 60 days!”
While many people at the Lodging Conference said recent market volatility had no impact on them, their transactions or their deals, this was clearly not the case for all.
A widely-held view was that it seems like someone hit the “PAUSE” button on hotel finance and purchase-sale transactions. Some fear a “reset” button may also have been tripped. The global market turmoil of the past 30-60 days triggered by the inability of our politicians to resolve deep U.S. budget issues, along with questions about political resolve by European governments to deal with their own problems continue to raise major issues.
And there are all the usual specters of big increases in taxes, continued high unemployment, sagging consumer confidence, rising labor costs, rampant inflation to deal with $14 trillion of debt, operating costs rising faster than RevPAR as well as war, plague and pestilence.
So here are some insights from industry leaders and vignettes JMBM’s hotel lawyers gathered at the Phoenix Lodging Conference. In many cases we have omitted the speaker’s names because I was not certain that the comments were intended for attribution.
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