Georgetown’s Hotel Monticello Trades

WASHINGTON, DC- The Hotel Monticello in Georgetown has traded in an off-market deal, Marc Magazine, the managing director of Savills Hotel Group, tells GlobeSt.com. The buyer is Monticello Hotel Owners LLC. Magazine, who brought together buyer and seller, declined to discuss pricing for the European-style boutique property.

“Hotel properties rarely come to market in Georgetown, much less trade,” Magazine says. “The new buyer is going to invest substantial capital to bring it up to high-quality boutique hotel standards.” The hotel currently offers 39 studio and one bedroom suites, but can expand its room count.

This is the first hospitality deal for Savills Hotel Group since it expanded its platform in August with the acquisition of Humboldt Hospitality, of which Magazine was a principal.

The company doesn’t have any other local deals pending in the pipeline, Magazine says. In fact, there has been a slowdown nationwide of hotel properties moving onto the market, in large part due to the events of this summer.

“I think that will change when we go into the New Year,” Magazine adds. The slowdown in deals began with the downgrade of the US credit rating by Standard & Poor’s. “That took the REITs out of the market because their stock prices took a hit. So even though the hospitality industry’s fundamentals remain good, without these major buyers large hotel deals have been scarce.”

One of the last major hotel deals in the Washington, DC area occurred in July, when Host Hotels & Resorts inked an agreement to acquire the 888-room Grand Hyatt Washington for $442 million.