Who’s Driving This Year’s Hotel Transactions?

John Strauss

As of YTD 2018, hotel transaction volume in the United States reached $29.7 billion, more than a 25% year-over-year increase, according to new JLL stats.

There are several reasons for the increase, John Strauss, senior managing director and co-head of Americas Hotel Capital Markets for JLL tells GlobeSt.com: The industry got a boost of energy in part because of tax reform, for starters. Also, hotel performance tends to track and is tightly correlated with GDP. The growth of the last year or so has created momentum in the hotel sector’s underlying fundamentals–hence the strong appetite for investors to buy into this sector, he says.

Private Equity Leads the Way

But who are these investors? Not surprisingly, given their ubiquity across the commercial real estate asset classes, this year private equity represents 37% of hotel acquisitions in the United States, or $11 billion. This compares to 30% ($7.1 billion) for all of 2017.