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Hotel Lawyers -- featured subjects and articles
Meet the Money® 2014

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Hotel Management Agreements

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Hotel industry trends

This is Jim Butler, author of www.HotelLawBlog.com and hotel lawyer. Please contact me at Jim Butler at jbutler@jmbm.com or 310.201.3526.

Published on:

Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com
2 April 2007
Hospitality Lawyer on the new “LIFESTYLE” hotel brands. What is a hotel lifestyle brand? That is a great question and one with some profound implications that we will explore a bit today. I would like to do that using Miraval — one of the new lifestyle brands — as something of a “case study.”

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Published on:

Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com
23 March 2007
Hospitality Lawyer on “LIFESTYLE” hotel mixed-use development. Hotel mixed-use has emerged as one of the few ways hotel developers may be able to make a new development economically feasible, with skyrocketing construction costs. It has also become one of the hottest things going as developers of other real estate uses (shopping centers, office, retail, residential and entertainment) discover the big “IRR Premiums” that may be harvested from well-planned and tightly integrated hotel mixed-use projects. (See, my earlier postings on www.HotelLawBlog.com from The Hotel Developers Conference® in Rancho Mirage. about how green hotels may be in all our futures, hotel mixed-use is the pass key to unlocking new development and bigger profits, and the perspectives of the most successful leaders in hotel mixed-use today)

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Published on:

Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com
21 March 2007
We have talked about a lot of important subjects here on www.HotelLawBlog.com, like hotel management agreements controlling the value of an asset (see “5 Milestones Marking The Road To Success For Hotel Management Agreements“), but I believe we may be on a new frontier where “GREEN” will be more important and faster than anyone ever imagined. It will be faster and better than Gore inventing the internet highway!!! With better results for all our lives and no less phenomenal growth.

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Published on:

by Jim Butler and Robert Braun
19 March 2007
Keywords:

Hotel Operating Agreement, HOA, Hotel Management Agreement, HMA, Hotel Management Contract, Management Contract. Hotel Operator, Hotel Manager, Hotel Owner. RFP for Hotel Manager. RFP for Hotel Operator, How to get a great hotel operator.

Terminology

Contracts between hotel owners and managers (or operators) controlling the management of a hotel go by various names. They are called hotel management agreements, HMAs, hotel management contracts or hotel operating agreements. For convenient reference, this article will generally use the term “Hotel Management Agreement” or “HMA.” However all these terms can be used interchangeably and mean the same thing, just as with hotel operator or hotel manager.

Whatever they are called, Hotel Management Agreements allocate risk between the hotel manager and the hotel owner. They are critical in determining the profitability and value of a hotel.

In order to consummate any substantial business transaction, there are inevitably some “challenges” to overcome. Hotel management agreements are no exception: in part because of their complexity, and in part because hotel management agreements typically transfer effective control over valuable assets for several decades, and their terms can easily enhance — or diminish — the value of hotel by a staggering amount.

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Published on:

Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com
13 March 2007
Hotel lawyer on hotel mixed-use development. “Hotel Mixed-Use” . . . and how it can be the pass key to unlocking both new development and bigger profits was the entire focus of The Hotel Developers Conference™ in Rancho Mirage. Creative ideas flowed and mixed. Nuggets of valuable insight were gathered. Introductions were made. Deals were done. The opening session of The Hotel Developers Conference™ was covered in my last posting on www.HotelLawBlog.com. And here’s what happened in the second full day.

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Published on:

Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com
7 March 2007
Veteran hotel developers, speaking at The Hotel Development Boot Camp – the pre-conference session of JMBM’s Hotel Developers Conference™ — recall the days when the hotel component of a mixed-use development was the “blood donor” of the project. Now, hotels are reaping profits in mixed-use environments and are viewed as essential components for infusing excitement into a mixed-use project. Indeed, mixed-use developers are wooing hotel developers in hopes of striking deals that will provide them with the means for providing a community hub for their projects.

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Published on:

Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com
6 March 2007
Hotel lawyer on hotel industry trends. What’s the price of gasoline have to do with the future of the lodging industry? Some pretty interesting research tells us “More than you might think”!

In a recent posting on www.HotelLawBlog, I talked about the intimate relationship between the U.S. economy and the lodging industry. You may recall that cited studies of the past 30 years show that for more than 24 years there was a remarkable statistical correlation of 1.2 between U.S. Real GDP and the demand for hotel room nights at hotel in the United States. That means that if the U.S. economy grew by 1%, then lodging demand (i.e. demand for hotel room nights) grew by 1.2%. And although the correlation is a little lower now (around .7), there is still a very strong correlation between the Real GDP and the lodging industry.. (For more details see, As goes the economy, so goes the hospitality industry — the ineluctable elasticity of demand!)

I was quite surprised by the number of www.HotelLawBlog.com readers who sent me emails commenting on that recent blog. It is always nice to know that so many of you actually read these postings. But several of you wondered out loud — or commented — that you thought the cost of petroleum or perhaps some other items might also have a strong correlation with the lodging industry. As to the impact of petroleum prices, there is a strong correlation. As to other factors, there appears to be little or no correlation. So the price of gasoline actually does have a lot to do with the future of the lodging industry. How much impact? Let’s take a look.

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Published on:

Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com

5 March 2007
In case you missed it, it has just been announced that former baseball star Reggie Jackson is the mystery developer of a proposed 252 room hotel and conference center in Seaside, California. At this point, Reggie joins a long line of celebrities and athletes jumping on the hotel mixed-use bandwagon we have covered here at www.HotelLawBlog.com. The band wagon already has many famous riders, including Bill Gates and Prince Al Waleed, Blackstone, Morgan Stanley in its acquisition of CNL Hotels & Resorts, Barry Sternlicht on his investments in China and India, as well as his launch of new brands such as the “1” and the Crillon, Paul Allen, Shaquille O’Neal, Donald Trump, Magic Johnson, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf?

Why is this important and why should we care?

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Published on:

Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com

4 March 2007
Hotel lawyer on hotel and hotel mixed-use development. Wasn’t it only “yesterday” that a few hundred million dollars seemed like a lot of money and made the headlines? After Blackstone’s $39 billion purchase of Equity Office Properties deal was topped in deal size by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’ bid for Texas Pacific Group (TXU) for about $45 billion, it almost seems like everyone yawns at “mere” billion dollar deals, much less something smaller. For example, did you notice any major headlines in the past couple of weeks about Winston Hotels being bought by Wilbur Investment for $850 million, or Apple Hospitality being bought by ING Clarion Partners for $890 million, or Hilton selling its Scandic Hotel chain to a private equity group for about $1.1 billion?

Nobody I know was particularly excited about these deals despite their size, which would have claimed headlines only a year ago. As I have commented before on www.HotelLawBlog.com, it really does seem that “Size no longer matters . . . at least in the hotel industry.”

But what does the big dollar focus on hospitality mean from private equity and celebrities– as we have discussed with such players as Bill Gates and Prince Al Waleed, Blackstone, Morgan Stanley in its acquisition of CNL Hotels & Resorts, Barry Sternlicht on his investments in China and India, as well as his launch of new brands such as the “1” and the Crillon, Paul Allen, Shaquille O’Neal, Donald Trump, Magic Johnson, Andre Agassi and Seffi Graf?

By themselves, these events show that smart money has tremendous confidence in the U.S. economy and in the lodging sector. They also validate the industry metrics of sustained profits and continued good times for at least several more years. But, combined with a few other factors, they also reaffirm the general belief that this is a great time to be developing hotels — particularly in a hotel mixed-use context — if it is done well. Let’s take a look at this and consider if we can get it right this time!

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Published on:

Author of www.HotelLawBlog.com
26 February 2007
Hospitality Lawyer on state of the hotel industry and its prospects. We are enjoying great times in the hospitality industry and the prospects are excellent that the good times will continue for at least several more years. But how good is it, and how good can it get? Let’s take a look!

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