Trinity Investments President and CEO Sean Hehir said that the COVID-19 pandemic left him and his colleagues — much like most of the global population — wondering whether they were doing the right things with their lives and their company.
Trinity had always focused on the type of larger corporate and group-demand-driven assets that were hit the hardest and the longest by the pandemic-induced downturn, he said, so it was only natural to sit back and wonder: “How sane is this strategy?”
But speaking with Hotel News Now fresh off the acquisition of yet another big-box hotel in the Hyatt Regency Greenwich in Greenwich, Connecticut, Hehir said he’s glad Trinity had the fortitude to stick to the plan even through all the pain.
“We still believed in [our investment strategy], and we’re seeing it now,” he said.
He said that strategy required a more concerted effort to lure in leisure travelers as that demand boomed to historic levels.
“When we renovated these larger assets, like [Grande Lakes Orlando Resort] in Orlando, [the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa] in Phoenix-Scottsdale and the Westin Maui, part of the goal was to attract the leisure travel because there’s nothing worse than showing up at a party that you haven’t been invited to,” he said. “And a lot of the time if you show up at a group hotel and you’re a leisure traveler, you feel like you’re the only one without a name tag. You sort of feel like you’re gatecrashing. We worked really hard to create these unique spaces and clubs and so forth that would make the leisure traveler feel as comfortable as a group traveler.”
Trinity has also focused investment to grow more geographically diverse over the past few years.
The Honolulu, Hawaii-based investment firm historically has focused on investments all around the Pacific Rim, from its home state to the West Coast of the U.S. and Mexico to Japan. But as illustrated by its Connecticut purchase, the company has branched out across the U.S. and has its eyes on expansion into Europe.
“We’re not in Europe, and we will be in Europe in the beginning of the new year,” Hehir said. “We’ll be announcing a joint venture with a major partner in Europe and will be opening offices in London.”
He added the company is particularly keen on investment in Mexico.
“We’re very focused on Mexico,” he said. “We’re working on getting Mexico capitalized right now. It’s dollarized markets in Mexico, predominantly the resort markets — Cabo, Cancun, Riviera Maya, Puerto Vallarta, those areas.”
He said a lot of the company's geographic expansion is driven by “following our larger private equity joint-venture partners into markets where we can be helpful.”
Hehir said the company currently has no investments in Japan but would like to return to that country and has partners clamoring for it.
He said one of the reasons his company was able to survive and thrive coming out of the worst economic impacts of the pandemic was due to those strong partnerships — with firms such as Oaktree Capital Management and Elliott Management. Trinity's base of “existing investors were terrific during COVID,” which allowed the company to reinvest in its portfolio and expand it, he said.
One of the company's biggest moves in recent years was to acquire lender Broadmark Realty for $1.2 billion in late 2019 via a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The use of SPACs to take companies public exploded and has subsequently waned since that point. Hehir said his company would consider doing another SPAC in the future, but not likely in the near term.
“We’ve watched what happened in the SPAC world, and now is a difficult time to go public,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of maturities coming to SPACs, especially in [the first quarter and third quarter] of next year. But we’re always looking, and we think very highly of the bankers and underwriters we worked with before.”