Among the tens of thousands of hotels across the U.S., a fraction of a fraction of them are owned by Black women, but a group of Black investors is looking to change that statistic.
The annual She Has a Deal Early Careerist pitch contest for female college and university students and recent grads gives up-and-coming hoteliers a chance to gain experience in hotel transactions and development while competing for $50,000 in limited partner deal equity.
In this Next Gen in Lodging episode, host Davonne Reaves spoke with this year's winners, Kayden Edwards and Brooklynn Tucker, both students about to head into their senior year at Howard University.
For their pitch, Edwards and Tucker chose what’s known as the Governor’s House, which had been a hotel, for a revitalization project. The idea is to turn it into not just a hotel but a place that’s the social spot for the city, hosting social gatherings, live music and other cultural experiences.
As part of their project, they structured a capital stack in the deal to make sure it all came into play, Tucker said.
One of the main goals when picking the project was making sure it stayed true to what Legacy Collection stands for, she said. It has a mission to unlock the potential of its properties while transforming them into spaces that tell the stories of the communities they’re in. It also keeps in focus ownership for underrepresented individuals in the hotel industry.
When looking at the different options, Tucker was initially interested in Miami while Edwards liked New Orleans and Chicago. With that in mind, they set out to find potential properties, Edwards said, who found the Governor House and pitched it to Tucker.
“The reason I was really keen on New Orleans is there’s always something going on in New Orleans,” she said, citing Mardi Gras and the Essence Festival specifically.
Through the She Has a Deal program, Edwards and Tucker went through a months-long course in which they often met multiple times a week and met with program founder Tracy Prigmore and other industry professionals to go over the ins and outs of the hotel ownership and transaction process. They finished by making their pitch to a panel of judges, who chose them as this year’s winners.
Having the opportunity to explore the ownership side of hospitality through this program along with their studies was important to them, Tucker said.
“We wanted to marry hospitality to our majors, so then that’s kind of where we got to go into ownership, because we knew that we wanted to be on the ownership side because also that’s where the wealth is,” she said. “Just as Black and brown individuals, we wanted to make sure that we’re operating at a place that actually makes the big decisions and that we’re able to actually put things into the market that people like us want to see.”
For more on Davonne Reaves’ interview with Brooklynn Tucker and Kayden Edwards about their experience with She Has a Deal, their university experience and career goals, listen to the podcast embedded above.