Articles Posted in How to Terminate Hotel Management Agreements

Published on:

16 November 2021

See how JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® can help you.

LOS ANGELES—The Global Hospitality Group® (GHG) of Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP (JMBM) has released an updated version of its Hospitality Credentials, detailing unsurpassed experience by providing representative clients and properties the GHG has worked on over the past 30 years. These Credentials show how the GHG has helped clients with more than 4,500 hospitality properties, valued at more than $112 billion.

Some notable accomplishments by members of the GHG over the last 12 months include:

  • Workout, recapitalization and repositioning of a $1 billion mixed-use lifestyle hotel project
  • Sale of a NYSE-traded hotel REIT’s entire portfolio of 15 upscale, select service hotels for $305 million
  • Closing more than $210 million in Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy loans (C-PACE)
  • Assisting clients with hotel management and franchise agreements for properties worth more than $1.5 billion
  • Serving as primary counsel for lenders on more than $2.2 billion in distressed hotel, retail and office loans during the global pandemic, including over $500 million for a single client

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Published on:

15 February 2019

$87 billion in hotel transactions involving more than 3,900 properties
LOS ANGELES—The hotel lawyers of JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® are pleased to present their updated Hospitality Credentials, which include clients and projects that represent more than $87 billion in hotel transaction experience involving more than 3,900 properties worldwide – more than any other law firm.

“If you are a hotel owner, developer, or capital provider, our hospitality lawyers can provide expertise and experience you just won’t find elsewhere,” said Jim Butler, Chairman of JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group. “Whether you are buying or selling a hotel, developing a new one, need a privacy and cybersecurity plan, or defend an ADA lawsuit – we have lawyers who know the ropes, and can guide you every step of the way.”

JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group provides a full range of services to the hospitality industry including:

  • ADA compliance & defense
  • Cannabis
  • Celebrity chef agreements
  • Construction
  • Corporate governance
  • Cybersecurity
  • Data privacy
  • Development
  • Equity & joint ventures
  • Expert witness
  • Fiduciary duty
  • Financing
  • Foreign investment
  • Franchise & licensing
  • Hotel-specific contracts
  • Labor & employment
  • Land use & environmental
  • Leasing
  • Litigation
  • Management agreements
  • Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Opportunity Zone
  • Proposition 65
  • Purchase & sale
  • Shareholder disputes
  • Tax
  • Trademark & copyright
  • Trusts and estates
  • Union negotiations
  • Union prevention
  • Vacation ownership
  • Workouts, bankruptcies & receiverships
“Exceeding $87 billion in hotel transactions involving 3,900 properties is a new milestone, and one I am proud to announce,” said Butler. “I am grateful to all of our wonderful hospitality clients who have shown us their trust and confidence over the years and continue to provide us with challenging and meaningful work.”

About JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group
JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group is the premier hospitality practice in a full-service law firm and the most experienced legal and advisory team in the industry. The Group publishes the Hotel Law Blog and hosts the annual Meet the Money® National Hotel Finance & Investment Conference (May 6-9, 2019 in Los Angeles). For more information visit www.HotelLawyer.com.

Contact:

Jim Butler
jbutler@jmbm.com
+1 310-201-3526

Published on:

22 December 2014

Click here for the latest articles on Hotel Management Agreements.

A version of this article first appeared in Hotel Business Review in December 2014, and this article is reprinted with permission from www.hotelexecutive.com.

The shrinking terms of hotel management agreements

Better bargaining position for hotel owners on HMAs

by

Jim Butler and Mark S. Adams | Hotel Lawyers

The relationship between hotel owners and managers continues to evolve. Hotel management agreements historically were long-term. Fifty to sixty year terms were common. However, in the last few years, hotel owners have successfully negotiated shorter contract durations and other more favorable terms, even from the largest and most sought-after major brands. This trend is likely to continue and expand as brands realize that hotel owners have the power to terminate so-called no cut, long-term hotel management agreements, despite contrary provisions in the contract which courts now routinely ignore as a matter of public policy.

The Separation Of Hotel Ownership From Hotel Operations

Trade, pilgrimage, conquest, and adventure have been the driving forces of travel since ancient times. For more than 5,000 years, accommodations for these travelers were provided by inns or monasteries. These lodging facilities were typically owned and operated by the same persons. That ownership pattern still exists today, particularly among mom-and-pop operations or small chains, but more and more, there is a separation of hotel ownership and hotel management.

This trend first gained traction when Kemmons Wilson started the first hotel franchising of Holiday Inns in the 1950s, and picked up momentum in the next couple of decades when hotel operators decided to move hotel real estate off their balance sheets with sale-leaseback transactions, and when hotel investors bought hotels and elected to lease their hotels to professional hotel operators. The separation of ownership and management continued and became the prevalent structure as hotel management agreements were developed in the 1970s and proliferated in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, particularly for larger, higher-end hotel properties.

But in the last ten or 15 years the franchise model has become the dominant one, at least by number of branded rooms, and particularly for the rapidly expanded extended stay and select service segments of the industry. Under this model, ownership is separate from branding, and usually a professional (unbranded) hotel management company is a surrogate for the brand.

Ultimately, the separation of ownership and management brought about by this evolution meant that the traditional hotel companies focused more on finding more owners of hotel real estate that they could brand and manage, and the owners of hotel real estate (lacking hotel brand or management capacity) focused on collecting rents or looking to their brand and operator to optimize profits. In other words, the concept of a hotel being owned by one entity and operated by another became a preferred model, whether under a hotel lease, hotel management agreement or a franchise.

Since the 1990s, when some estimate that 60% of the hotel rooms in the U.S. were unbranded, more owners have elected to brand their hotels to access the professional management, finaceability, marketing power and resources of the brands. Today, unbranded hotel rooms probably comprise less than 20% of the hotel rooms in the U.S. This massive shift to the brands further reinforced the separation of hotel ownership from hotel branding and management.

The separation has been facilitated by the fact that hotel guests do not particularly care who owns the title to the hotel real estate as long as the hotel’s physical facilities and service levels meet their expectations and are predictable, satisfactory, clean and safe. Branding was one way to provide assurances of consistency and meeting minimum brand standards. In this evolving dynamic, brands focused on operations, brand standards, and system expansion.  They were less capital-constrained because owners now provide the bulk of capital to build and maintain hotel real estate and related facilities.

The Hotel Management Agreement (“HMA”)

The HMA is one of the clearest separations of ownership and operation. A branded HMA with one of the traditional hotel management companies is typically a long-term agreement between the owner and operator under which the operator is delegated virtual control over the operations of the hotel. The principal provisions in an HMA are, as follows: CONTINUE READING →

Published on:

4 December 2013

Hotel Lawyer on the jump in hotel development and investment activity.

These are getting to be pretty exciting times to be in the hotel business. Hotel industry fundamentals have continued to improve since the Great Recession and none of the experts see a particular event or reason that fundamentals will stall. Although occupancy growth rate is slowing in some sectors, ADR growth generally continues to drive greater profits to the bottom line.

All this activity creates “management agreement opportunities”

New development is finally coming back, and 2014 may be a break-out year for long-delayed projects. The volume of purchase and sale transactions continues to grow. And owners or investors are seeking to maximize hotel value by repositioning existing assets.

The confluence of these factors is creating a lot of hotel management agreement opportunities for hotel brands, operators and owner/developers.
The 2 most important things affecting the value of your hotel

In the midst of all this activity, hotel developers and investors should remember that two of the most important things they can do with their hotel asset are to

  1. Choose the “right” brand and operator
  2. Negotiate a management agreement that preserves a reasonable amount of value, control and flexibility

And . . . get practical guidance on these issues from experienced veterans representing your interests (and only your interests) at the earliest possible time in the process.

New White Paper on short term management contracts
In case you missed it, Hotel Management recently published an excellent white paper that is highly relevant to all of these hotel management agreement opportunities. The article is called, “The Evolution of Short-Term Management Contracts“. Click here to download a PDF of the article.

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Published on:

1 April 2013

Hotel owners: How the appellate decision in Marriott International v Eden Roc can affect your hotel investment (and why you should understand the law behind the court’s decision)

As we reported in our 27 March 2013 blog, a New York Appellate Division court made it possible for the owners of the Eden Roc Renaissance hotel in Miami Beach to oust Marriott as its operator — despite the long-term hotel management contract between the two, which would have lasted another 43 years. (See “Marriott loses appeal in Eden Roc case: Why all long-term hotel management agreements are now terminable.”)

Setting the stage: owner-operator disputes over hotel management agreements

The relationship between a hotel owner and hotel operator is complex. While the owner bears the financial risk of the hotel’s success or failure and its gain or loss in value, the operator has the exclusive right to manage the owner’s business and is paid “off the top” whether the hotel is profitable or not. The contract between the owner and operator — the hotel management agreement — typically transfers control of the hotel’s assets to the operator.

Hotel owners nationwide are keenly aware of both the benefits and impediments of long term hotel management agreements with branded operators (and nearly all such contracts are long term, often running 40 or 50 years). On the upside, the brand can provide stability, consistent standards, a reservation system, marketing expertise and professional staffing. But the downside can be hard for owners to live with — brands can rigidly incur needless expenses, be unresponsive to market conditions and impervious to the owner’s need to run a profitable business and protect its asset.

While the majority of hotel owners and operators work hard to achieve a balance that is a win-win for both parties, it is easy to understand how things can go badly, fast.

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Published on:

27 March 2013

Hotel Lawyer with a major legal development on terminating hotel management agreements — Marriott v Eden Roc.

Under a New York Appellate Division court decision issued March 26, 2013, virtually all hotel management agreements are now terminable at will by owners. And this result will prevail even against the Marriott-style management agreements that seek to avoid an “agency” characterization of the owner-operator relationship.

The decision was rendered in the case of Marriott International v. Eden Roc reversing the November 7, 2012 decision of Judge Melvin L. Schweitzer, who had granted Marriott’s motion for a preliminary injunction, halting the owner’s ouster of Marriott for poor performance.

In reversing the lower court decision, the Appellate Division succinctly stated that hotel management agreements giving full control to operators are personal services contacts and cannot be enforced by injunction. The court said:

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Published on:

30 December 2012

Hotel Lawyer on the spike in reflagging hotels. It’s often good news for us when the business section of a major newspaper explains what is going on in the hotel sector. (And nice, too, when the paper includes a quote by yours truly.)

The topic? How and why hotel owners reflag properties. The reason for the story: the Great Recession has changed just about everything.

In the New York Times article, Dressing Up for Success, reporter Amy Zipkin says: “According to statistics from Smith Travel Research, a research firm in Henderson, Tenn., nearly 2,500 hotels were reflagged in 2011. While that represents just a 5 percent sliver of all hotel properties in the United States, it was still a 39 percent increase from 2010.”

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Published on:

Two owners terminate long-term hotel management agreements, seize control of their hotels from branded operators, and then settle their litigation

8 July 2012

Hotel Lawyer with an interesting comparison of two significant hotel takeovers — Marriott Edition Waikiki becomes The Modern Honolulu and Fairmont Turnberry Isle & Resort drops Fairmont

Two significant hotel takeovers that started at virtually the same moment last August both settled last week. One is the widely-publicized takeover of the Edition Waikiki in Honolulu and the other is a little-publicized takeover of the Turnberry Isle Resort & Spa in the Miami where the owner terminated a “no-cut” hotel management contract with more than 50 years left to run and expelled Fairmont from the property.
JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group®, together with local counsel Dennis Richard of Richard and Richard, P.A., represented the owner of the Turnberry Isle Resort & Spa in a major victory over Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, in Miami, Florida, by preventing Fairmont from re-taking the hotel. For reasons discussed below, that result is noteworthy when compared to the result in the case between Marriott and the owners of the Edition Waikiki in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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Published on:

17 January 2012

Hotel Lawyer on Hotel Management Agreement disputes between Owners and Hotel Operators.

While there are always disputes simmering between hotel owners and hotel operators, the past few years has witnessed a big increase in the number of disputes ripening to litigation and arbitration. In a recent article, we discussed some of the root causes of this trend and role of the economy. That article was entitled, “Litigation and disputes between hotel owners and operators are on the rise. Why?”

I believe that most owner-operator disputes stem from the owner’s belief that the operator is not operating the hotel in a satisfactory manner and is treating the owner unfairly. A bad economy drives the parties to take action. When discussions fail to resolve the issues, litigation or arbitration claims often result.

Operators as fiduciaries: Why is this important and what does it mean?

As I mentioned in the recent article, some of these disputes pivot on the fiduciary responsibility of the operator. This is an important legal concept for hotel owners to understand. Generally, a hotel operator is the “agent” of the owner. Every agent is a fiduciary. A fiduciary has many duties such as a duty of loyalty, full disclosure, and noncompetition. A fiduciary also has a duty to prefer his principal’s interest (the owner’s interests) over his own interests.

I discussed these important concepts in a sidebar recently published in an article by Jason Freed of HotelNewsNow (a division of Smith Travel Research) in his article, Economic woes drive owner-operator disputes. I have reprinted that sidebar below with a few formatting edits to make the reading a bit easier.

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Published on:

12 January 2012

Hotel Lawyer: Hotel Management Agreement litigation and controversies are on the rise.

I was recently interviewed by Jason Freed of HotelNewsNow (a division of Smith Travel Research) for his article, Economic woes drive owner-operator disputes and it got me thinking.

Hotel lawyers will tell you that there are always disputes going on between hotel owners and operators, and that most of them are resolved at the bargaining table without any legal action.

CONTINUE READING →

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