While the hotel transactions landscape has been largely depressed by the impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, commentary in recent earnings calls shows many leaders at hotel-focused real estate investment trusts are eager to get back to do doing deals.

That is not true for all, though, as many of the more cash-strapped and highly leveraged REITs are saying maintaining liquidity remains their short-term focus.

Here are some highlights of executive commentary from fourth quarter 2020 earnings calls.

"I think what has changed is the simple fact that a lot of owners of hotels who were holding off bringing their properties to market have now started, as we have messaged today, to see light at the end of the tunnel here. I think that you can tell from our commentary and from our release that we feel confident, assuming the vaccine continues to be rolled out and there isn’t any disruption due to new variants being found, which it doesn’t appear to be today anyway.

"It’s a beginning of a new cycle, and there are a lot of buyers who sat on the sidelines to wait for the time when there might be more buyer interest, and we’re starting to see that now. The pipeline has truly meaningfully expanded between the fourth quarter and the early part of this year. So when I say there are actionable opportunities, these in many instances are private owners who have wanted to monetize their investment for one reason or another. There’s not that much distress out there.

"We are seeing owners who say this is the time to take these assets to market. I don’t think that there is a lot of just price analysis occurring, based on the conversations we’re having. These are people who really want to sell their hotels. Now, we are in a really unique position given the fact that we have $2.5 billion of cash and we have the ability to acquire up to $2 billion of assets out of existing liquidity, subject to maintaining $600 million of liquidity inside the company. That gives us the ability to go out and buy hotels on an all-cash basis without the need to obtain debt financing, which is a distinguishing factor for us. And we have very strong, deep relationships having been in this industry for over 30 years and a very solid reputation with the ability to move quickly and to get deals done.

"The other thing I think that is bringing people to market today is the fact that the debt markets are opening up. We expect that there’s going to be competition from private equity firms. There’s no question about it. But we’re happy to have that competition. ... So we’re confident. I don’t know how many deals we’re going to get done, but we do believe that we’re at the beginning of the cycle. We came into 2020 in the best shape that the company’s ever been in because, in large part, we believed going into ‘19 that we were heading into the end of the lodging cycle. We were prudent in our capital allocation strategy, and I think it’s going to pay off for us [by] giving us the opportunity to acquire hotels as the economy reopens and as the lodging cycle begins to move."

Ashish Parikh, chief financial officer: "We also highlighted that we went under contract to sell two additional hotels, bringing our year-to-date total asset value of dispositions to $178.5 million. The successful closing of the sales in addition to the Sheraton Wilmington which closed in December, and the Duane Street Hotel, which is expected to close during the second quarter, will generate total proceeds of $216 million. Following the repayment of the $25 million mortgage loan on Capitol Hill Hotel, net proceeds from these dispositions will amount to approximately $191 million, which we will utilize in tandem with the proceeds from our unsecured notes to pay off our 2021 term loan and reduce our overall debt by approximately $150 million."

Neil Shah, president and chief operating officer: "We are largely done [with dispositions] for the time being. We'll always remain opportunistic. But at this stage, we are not marketing any assets for sale. We've discussed our joint venture assets in South Boston. And those discussions continue with our joint venture partner, but we no longer have any assets for sale in the broader marketplace."

"The transaction volume in our industry continues to be low. We expect an increase in number of opportunities as we move through the recovery and are well-positioned to act in ways that will further grow and enhance our existing portfolio. Our outperformance during these unprecedented times is a testament to the strength of our underlying strategy and low-leverage balance sheet and has preserved our capacity to pursue accretive opportunities in the early stages of a recovery. We remain intently focused on maximizing long-term value for our shareholders and are confident we are well-positioned as travel continues to recover."

"If it's a cash-type acquisition, I think we need to get to a place with our balance sheet that we feel is very comfortable and very comfortable for investors. Right now, we have certainly ample liquidity, but we're still using cash on a monthly basis. I think we have to get to [positive] cash flow. And then I think we have to stick by our leverage policy and what that's been historically. We've sought to maintain 10% of our gross debt balance as cash on the balance sheet. We've also sought to have our leverage be 45% net debt to gross assets. So we're going to have to let those assets return to cash-flow positive and, if you will, fill the coffers before I think we're getting very aggressive on the acquisitions front. So we're having financial discipline.

"Luckily, and I'm sure I'll get many questions about this, we're not seeing a ton of opportunities in the luxury hotel space. Frankly, I'm not sure we will see a lot of opportunities at very attractive prices. There's just been so much capital raised out there to target hotel acquisitions that the weight of capital will likely keep prices elevated rather than allowing there to be some sort of a feeding frenzy. So I'm not really anticipating [deep discounts]. We're kind of sticking to our knitting. We're repairing the company, and we're clearly on the back end of the crisis, if you will. And then that will set us up ultimately to pursue new acquisitions."

"Today we have $200 million of capital available for acquisitions. We are currently actively underwriting a number of resort properties, mostly in our existing markets that have the potential to generate returns that exceed our cost of capital."

"We are comfortable shifting from defense to offense, at this point. We feel comfortable that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We can underwrite the vaccine rollout. We're not going to get the exact trajectory right, but I think we have enough confidence that we kind of have a good feel for where it's going to go. On the cover level, we're comfortable with the capital we have today to go out and deploy $200 million in acquisitions. We do have a pipeline. It is a competitive environment. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, one of the things that we're doing is [focusing] on a number of the existing markets that we're in where we're both strategic and are synergistic with assets we already own so that we can underwrite those deals. Often we have relationships within those markets of owners of other assets to try to encourage off-market transactions."

"We do have very, very frequent conversations with [Singapore-based joint venture partner] GIC. They've been a tremendous partner of ours really since the inception of the venture. I think, as we've said pretty consistently, we're very fortunate to have this unique vehicle for growth as we look at what we hope is the beginning of a fairly robust recovery here. As you know, GIC is a long-term vehicle, and in many ways they're built for these type of environments where there is some level of dislocation in market pricing. So we would like to take advantage of that. ... We now have I think a very positive liquidity position, and we've got real flexibility in our balance sheet to pursue deals. It has been quiet from a transaction perspective over the course of the last six months or so. We do think that's going to change."

"Despite the extremely challenging operating environment, we were able to navigate the pandemic and execute on several transactions that increased the quality of our portfolio, reduced our debt, and better positioned the company for long-term growth. During the year, we sold two hotels, the Renaissance Baltimore and the Renaissance [Los Angeles Airport Hotel], for combined gross proceeds of nearly $172 million. These two transactions bring the number of hotels sold in the past three years to a total of nine hotels for gross proceeds of approximately $575 million. In July, we sold the Renaissance Baltimore at a reasonable discount to pre-pandemic pricing, which we believe was a good outcome, considering the asset is a lower-quality, urban group-oriented hotel that was losing money and expected to lose money for some time.

"In December, we were fortunate to compete the sale of the Renaissance [Los Angeles Airport Hotel] at what we believe to be a pre-pandemic valuation. This was a fantastic execution and a direct result of our strong balance sheet and nimble investment team. We did not have to sell this hotel, nor did we need the incremental liquidity, and because of this, we were able to hold the line and extract premium pricing equating to a 6.8% cap rate on 2019 actual earnings."

There is "really no change from before. [We're] underwriting based on what we think the long-term earnings potential of the asset are and discounting based on overall risks that we see for the asset. We are clearly targeting long-term relevant real estate. Some of those hotels, the discounts ... have been smaller than what we see for more commodity assets that have garnered larger discounts to pre-pandemic pricing."

"We have a good amount of liquidity available to us today. We're obviously looking at managing to various scenarios and various ways of how things stabilize and how quickly things stabilize. So I would say that our continued immediate focus obviously remains on the operations of our hotels getting to break-even and hopefully getting cash flow positive as a company sooner rather than later.

"We have been very active throughout various cycles throughout our history, as you know very well, so it's something that we will absolutely look at. We'll be looking to be an active participant to the extent the next cycle provides some interesting acquisition opportunities. And I think that there are various levers we can pull to have the type of liquidity available to most of what needs to be an action required. That being said ... there certainly doesn't appear to be a tremendous number of assets out there on the markets that are a very appealing, great strategic fit and would come at [an attractive] price. ... There just isn't that much of that kind of stuff out there."

"We are focused, as we articulated, on continuing to reopen hotels, sell non-core assets, and use those proceeds plus excess cash to continue to reduce debt.

"We have plenty of optionality given within the covenant framework. We'll continue to look at the balance sheet and continue to push out maturities. I also don't think you're going to see a lot of transactions [for larger, more strategic assets]. I don't see those occurring this year. I think, though, as we work on recovery and continue to get better visibility, in 2022 and beyond, you can rest assured that Park will be in position to be able to compete at the appropriate time."