NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Highgate executives haven't been afraid to do deals since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Principal and Chief Commercial Officer Ankur Randev said the investments his company has made are more targeted than simply throwing money around because it can.
"Since we're an owner, we don't do deals for the sake of growth, but it's where we can add value," he said while speaking with Hotel News Now at the recent Hotel Data Conference.
Recent deals include a $1.5 billion joint venture with Cerberus Capital Management to acquire real estate investment trust CorePoint Lodging, the purchase of Trust Hospitality's 22 hotel management portfolio and a $2.8 billion acquisition of Colony Capitals hospitality assets, in addition to several smaller, one-off transactions.
Randev said the company continues to expand its horizons through deals.
"We looked at a couple of sectors," he said. "We looked at the tertiary market, limited-service hotel sector, which we were not in pre-COVID. We were a full-service, urban player pre-COVID. And that was interesting. Then we got into a few tech ventures, and then of course, senior living. So it's been a busy last couple of months."
Randev said Highgate has also targeted investment in tech platforms that can be viewed as complementary to its core hotel ownership and operations business.
"The thought process there is there's a lot of value-add that you could do just by making that investment because it's core to what we do and complementary, and we're agnostic to what stage we get in," he said. "So at the end of the day, if we think that it adds a lot of value to our core business, we get into it."
For more from Hotel News Now's interview with Highgate's Ankur Randev, watch the video above.