Hotel Investing

[Alton Williams]

Is there anyone out there that is actively investing or interested in investing in hotels? I am a hotel operator and I absolutely love the business model tenants/guests pay you rent every night. Obviously there is much more involved, but at the core this is what the business is to me. In my eyes it is a great time to buy established properties because the cost is still below that of building new hotels and there are plenty of solid deals around especially in Europe (compliments of Barry Sternlicht's interview on Squawk Box this morning). As I get older though it seems like there are always good deals around if you know where to look or better yet if people know where to look for you. I heard someone say the deal of a lifetime comes around about once every week, just be ready when it does.

[Chris Winterhalter]

@Alton Williams

I am very interested in investing in hotels. We have a hotel construction company so we are constantly in the hotel arena. We actually did a Sheraton and a Hilton project not far from you a few years ago. Last year we almost bought a hotel project. The deal ended up not coming together (price) but it was a great learning experience from a hotel investment perspective. We are still on the lookout for hotel projects and will hopefully add hotel investing to the business over the next few years. The market is extremely hot right now though...as I am sure you know REVPAR is up across the board and deal activity is high as well.