Hyatt Hotels’ approximately $135 million purchase of a hotel in Irvine, California, is among the highest-priced hospitality deals of the past five years in Orange County, as tourism rebounds from early pandemic setbacks in the state’s southern coastal regions.
Public filings show Chicago-based Hyatt acquired the 541-room Hotel Irvine Jamboree Center hotel, built in 1984 at 17900 Jamboree Road, from investment and development firm Irvine Co. of Newport Beach, California.
The price amounts to approximately $250,000 per room, about on par with the average of $258,000 paid for hotels in the region during the past 12 months, as Orange County posted about $815 million in total sales, according to CoStar data.
Hyatt Hotels confirmed the Aug. 3 purchase in an Aug. 9 statement regarding its latest quarterly earnings. The company did not immediately respond to a request from CoStar News to comment on its plans for the Irvine property.
The deal is the fifth-largest hotel deal of the past five years by total price in Orange County, according to hotel brokerage and research firm Atlas Hospitality Group, which was not involved in the sale. The largest was Ohana Real Estate Investors’ purchase of the 400-room Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point for approximately $492.5 million in December 2019.
Orange County, home to Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, has seen a significant rebound in visitors and hotel bookings in the past year, posting among the strongest hospitality recoveries among major U.S. tourism regions as revenue per available room, a key metric in the hospitality industry, grew 123%, according to CoStar data.
“Group and corporate travel demand are expected to show a significant recovery this year, but these segments are not expected to fully recover for a couple of years,” a CoStar Market Analytics report found. Orange County’s occupancy rate, which reached a pandemic-era peak of 78.1% in June, is still slightly lagging pre-pandemic levels but outpacing national rates.
While hotel sales in the region cooled somewhat in 2022, Atlas Hosptality Group data showed Orange County posted more than $835.2 million in sales during 2021, nearly doubling the 2020 figure. First-half 2022 data has not yet been released, though Atlas President Alan Reay said total sales dollar volume was down about 17% from the year-earlier period, with the median price per room rising nearly 14%.