BERLIN — While Trinity Investments has decades of success investing in the U.S., Managing Partner Ryan Donn said it took "a leap of faith" — along with encouragement from their investment partners — to set up shop across the Atlantic Ocean.
The Honolulu-based investment firm recently launched a formal plan to expand across Europe, opening a London office led by Donn. The company's first European purchase came in early April with the acquisition of the Park Hyatt Zurich, through a joint venture with Oaktree Capital Management and UBS Asset Management.
Speaking to Hotel News Now during the 2024 International Hospitality Investment Forum, Donn said his company will be very deliberate and thoughtful about its next few investments to make sure they are "definitive and representative of what we want Trinity to be for Europe."
"So the Park Hyatt Zurich is a fantastic example — high-quality asset, high-quality market, good partners, good brand, all of those things," he said.
Donn said that while there are "fantastic opportunities on the eastern side of Europe," for the time being, Trinity is going to key in on resort markets in countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal. The company is also looking at mountainous regions such as Switzerland, has interest in France and Greece, and recently chased a deal in Ireland.
"In the U.S., we buy nice hotels in nice places — that's what we boil down our strategy to be," Donn said. "I'd like that to be the same in Europe. So nice hotels in nice places. They may look different than our U.S. hotels."
He said the types of large assets Trinity often targets in the U.S. are simply nonexistent in Europe, but the positive flip side is the "supply pipeline is pretty close to nonexistent" in Europe.
For all of HNN's interview with Trinity's Ryan Donn, watch the video above.