New Alliance to Serve Hotel Sector’s Capital Market Needs

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Leslie Ng, Chief Investment Officer, Interstate

Interstate Hotels & Resorts, a leading hotel management company based in Arlington, Va., has entered into a strategic alliance with Hospitality Funding, of Palm Beach, Fla., in which the latter will assist Interstate’s clients with their capital market needs for hotel projects, Interstate announced Jan. 19.

The two companies reportedly have worked together on various debt and equity sources since 2010 and have successfully executed numerous projects. Transactions in which Hospitality Funding arranged the equity and debt on behalf of owners of Interstate-managed hotels included a quarter-billion-dollar equity JV with a leading hotel investment group, the acquisition of six premium-branded select service hotels and the acquisition of a 718-room, full-service branded hotel in Orlando, Fla., an Interstate spokesperson told CPE.

The partnership can assist hotel owners with financing needs in acquisition financing, renovation financing, construction financing, long-term financing and joint venture equity. With this alliance, Interstate said, it is “leveraging its longstanding and trusted industry relationships to assist current and prospective hotel owners with securing debt for their hotel projects.”

“Interstate’s partnership with Hospitality Funding offers true added value to Interstate’s existing arsenal of services to our hotel owners,” Leslie Ng, Interstate’s chief investment officer, said in a prepared statement. “Owners now have access to a variety of financing needs, from acquisition financing to joint venture equity, making Interstate’s suite of services even more robust.”

Interstate is a wholly owned subsidiary of a 50/50 joint venture between subsidiaries of Thayer Lodging Group and Jin Jiang Hotels and, with its affiliates, manages nearly 430 hotels with more than 76,500 rooms in North America, the U.K., continental Europe, Russia and the CIS, and China.

Hospitality Funding is a boutique financial advisory firm focused on raising equity, mezzanine and debt financing for the acquisition of all types of hospitality assets. It is headed by investment bankers Scott Silver and Steven Fischler and has executed more than $2 billion in debt and equity funding.