GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: Mid-Market Hotel Sales Group Starts

Sun Hospitality will hit the streets as Sunbelt in Texas, Sun Pacific in California, Sun Lakes in Illinois, Sun Gulf in Tampa and a still-to-be-named Sun team for the Northeast. In the established offices, Plasencia's senior vice presidents will double as managing directors for the regions.

Texas gets to lead the launch because it's holding the flagship portfolio: 14 hotels on the "to go" list of a Northeast institutional owner and six one-off, privately owned properties. Leading the Sunbelt team is Plasencia's Robert E. Wiemer Jr. of Houston, who's hired Paul Williams in Dallas and Norris Lawrence in Austin for the initiative. Williams has 25 years in the hospitality industry and Lawrence, 15 years.

The Sun Pacific office will be led by Bernie Murphy in San Diego; Sun Lakes by Richard Niedbala in Chicago; and Sun Gulf by Dennis Reed in Tampa. They are now interviewing senior-level execs in top metros within their regions. When all is said and done, Sun Hospitality will have about 15 seasoned hotel brokers in place in key US cities.

Lou Plasencia, president and CEO, tells GlobeSt.com that the Sun Hospitality idea started to form as more and more longtime clients asked for disposition services of non-core mid-market and limited-service assets. He says he elected to start a subsidiary rather than expand the parent corporation because he didn't want to "lose the focus" built in the past decade of brokering high-end hotel sales. Key to the subsidiary's delivery is that it will have the same database with 10,000 US hotel owners and same kind of hands-on attention for the under $10-million listings as Plasencia gives to big-ticket deals.

As the hospitality industry is so keenly aware, the post-9-11 downturn drove most hoteliers to take a hard look at portfolios, many jumping into strategic pruning to replace vintage product with newer doors and latch onto a cycling opportunity to acquire upscale properties. On the buy side, capital is so free-flowing that sales in the mid-market and limited-service category are stronger then they've been in the past decade. And in most cases, the buyers are located within a 50- to 100-mile radius of the property, making Plasencia's database and Sun's regional structuring invaluable components for a niche play with a goal to sell 20 hotels per year.

"Our job is to know. When we take on an assignment, we already know who the best, most likely buyer, is," Wiemer says. "The worst thing we can do is take on a piece of business and not service it well.