LOS ANGELES — With four hotels scheduled to open this year, a branded residence breaking ground and multiple projects in the pipeline, Standard International is in “major growth mode.”
In an interview at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit, Miranda Mancuso, Standard's senior vice president of acquisitions and development for the Americas, said her company’s strategy is to be in every major international gateway city.
“There’s a long list of places that we want to be in, and we’re slowly finding the right opportunities to do that,” she said. “It’s really important for us to find not only the right locations but the right partner.”
New Projects
Standard has a global portfolio of properties under its Standard, Bunkhouse and Peri Hotel brands. It has eight hotels open under the Standard brand, nine under Bunkhouse and two under Peri.
This year, the company has four openings planned under its Standard and Bunkhouse hotels brands. It will open Standard Hotels in Singapore and in Melbourne, Australia. The Hotel Genevieve in Louisville, Kentucky, and Hotel San Fernando in Mexico City will open under the Bunkhouse umbrella.
The Hotel Genevieve is Standard’s largest new-build Bunkhouse property at 122 rooms. The Hotel San Fernando is the brand’s second in Mexico.
The company also plans to break ground this year on its first Standard-branded residences property in Midtown Miami. The condominium will have 226 units, 70% of which are already sold, and units should be ready for owners by the end of 2024. The company partnered with local developer Rosso Development on the project.
The Standard Residences Midtown Miami project is the company's first foray into residential units. Though this is purely a branded residences project, the company is open to Standard hotel projects that include residential units as well, Mancuso said.
The Standard Hotel project in Lisbon will have 165 hotel rooms with about 24 residential units, and the property will serve as a model for future mixed projects.
“We’re definitely seeing mixed-use buildings and opportunities coming our way a lot, often with a residential component,” she said.
Standard International has development teams in the Americas, Europe and in. For a long time, the company has been focused on growing in Europe, resulting in a strong pipeline in the continent, Mancuso said. It has secured projects in Lisbon, Portugal; Dublin, Ireland; Brussels, Belgium; and Vienna, Austria. The company also has Standard Hotel projects in Austin and Brooklyn as well as Pattaya, Vietnam.
The Bunkhouse brand will continue to grow mostly in secondary and tertiary markets, but there are opportunities to grow in primary markets, too, she said. It has two projects in Houston, one in Fort Worth, one in Chattanooga and another outside of Mexico City.
Growth Strategy
The bulk of Standard Hotels’ and Bunkhouse’s portfolio growth is coming from new development, some of which have adaptive-reuse components, Mancuso said. There’s a main focus on growing the portfolio in the U.S., Canada and Latin America.
Portfolio growth in in Europe initially was aimed to complement the company's first international flagship, the Standard, London, that opened in 2019. It opened a property in Ibiza in the summer of 2022.
“We’ve been really focused on growing Standard in Europe, but now we feel like we have a really strong pipeline,” she said. “We’re kind of refocusing our energy, especially my time specifically, in the Americas.”
Standard International is optimistic that conditions are improving for developing new hotels, Mancuso said. The cost of materials is slowly coming down, and the company’s new-build projects are moving forward, she said.
Standard is focusing on potential conversion projects as well as mixed-use developments that can help make projects pencil, she said.
Many factors go into finding the right opportunity, including location, supply/demand metrics and long-term partnerships with a vision for the project, Mancuso said, noting that the management company's strategy is primarily to be asset-light.
With existing buildings, Standard seeks opportunities to add value, she said. That means looking at hotels that haven’t been renovated or buildings that others may overlook.
“We pride ourselves in seeing opportunities where others don't, and that can be both in location as well as in the physicality of the building,” she said.
The Standard, London, is an example. While everyone else who looked at the property initially wanted to tear it down, Standard International and its developer, Crosstree Real Estate Partners, chose to bring new life to the building, she said.
“That’s been a great success, so it’s a good case study for that model,” she said.
The Bunkhouse properties are predominantly smaller on average than Standard Hotels, averaging about 50 rooms compared to 100 to 150 rooms, Mancuso said. There are a lot of opportunities for Bunkhouse conversions as owners of independent hotels decide they don’t want to be in the hotel management business.
“We love going into buildings that have some character and history, also to help tell the story of what we're going to do, because at the Bunkhouse level, every single property is bespoke and special to that unique location and building,” she said. “Being able to be inspired by the history of an existing special building is really incredible.”
As guests seek out more experiential hotel stays, Standard International is in a good position to capture that demand, Mancuso said. Experiential travel and hotels have always been a big part of its business thesis. A significant part of that is the connections the Standard and Bunkhouse properties have to their neighborhoods and the people who live and work nearby.
“We’re seeing how important that is right now,” she said. “We really know how to connect to that local guest as well as the travelers from outside of town.”