NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Hotel acquisition opportunities abound in the U.S. and abroad for Trinity Investments.
Samantha Sugarman, senior vice president of asset management at Trinity Investments, said Trinity is interested in breathing new life into hotels and resorts, not only with defensive capital expenditures, but also offensive CapEx.
In a video interview with Hotel News Now at the Hotel Data Conference, she said “there are a lot of properties that were going on 10, 12 years without a full renovation. Those are the assets we really like.”
These hotels and resorts can regain the market share they have lost, she added, but also be improved to grow their values.
“Finding new ways to infuse capital … to grow more diverse demand or to really lean into some higher-rated transient [demand],” Sugarman added.
In early August, Trinity acquired the 235-room Washington Marriott Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., from Buccini Pollin Group for an undisclosed price. In April, Trinity acquired the 138-room Park Hyatt Zurich in a joint venture with Oaktree Capital Management and UBS Asset Management. That same month, Trinity acquired the 404-room Scottsdale Plaza Resort in Arizona for $124.3 million from Highgate.
Trinity ended 2023 with approximately $5.4 billion of assets under management. In February 2023, Trinity acquired the 1,000-room Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood, Florida, for $835 million to convert it to a Signia by Hilton. In July, Trinity and UBS refinanced the Diplomat with a $575 million floating rate loan from Citi and Deutsche Bank to help pay off debt and fund the resort's renovation, CoStar News' Joshua Andino reported.
But hotel acquisition and investment opportunities aren't everywhere, she said.
“The opportunities are harder to come by given the credit market. Maybe we will see some changes in that in the coming weeks,” she said. “The deals that are getting done are really ones with existing partners that have worked with us before, who trust us to execute on the business plan and have conviction around the productions that we are putting forward.”
Sugarman added Trinity’s European team is in place and ready to execute on opportunistic hotel acquisitions throughout the region.
On the renovation front, Trinity recently invested $80 million to renovate its JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa that the firm purchased in 2019 for $605 million. Trinity also spent $160 million to renovate the Westin Maui Resort & Spa, Ka'anapali, which the firm purchased in 2017 for $317 million. This month, Trinity will rebrand the Hyatt Regency Indian Wells Resort & Spa in Southern California to the Grand Hyatt Indian Wells Resort & Villas after a $64 million renovation.
For more of Sugarman’s insights and comments, please watch the embedded video above.