Quotes of the week: Aimbridge, Hotel Equities, Wyndham, JRK

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I’m an operator at heart, and someone said to me, when I walk into a hotel, my whole face lights up. I like walking the back of the house, meeting with the team, trying to motivate them and watch them grow. This is an operator’s job.” — Craig Smith, Aimbridge Hospitality Read story

“They are effectively going to become our capital arm, allowing us to go ahead and do the things from a capital standpoint that historically Hotel Equities and, in many cases, including our partners, could not execute on. We just did not have the wherewithal. We didn’t have access to that type of capital to get into these deals from a sliver equity standpoint, or key money standpoint, continuing the SAAs (strategic alliance agreements) that require recognition capital, and now true M&A. So, all of a sudden, we’re playing in multiple sandboxes that none of our groups could have historically. Now we all have access to that capital. It’s another value proposition for our alliance partners.” — Brad Rahinsky, Hotel Equities Read story

“The truth is this: our board connected with Choice and its advisors over 25 times since April 2023, including on some occasions at our initiative. We consistently, explicitly, and repeatedly explained the core issues Choice would need to address to make its proposed offer attractive, reasonably certain, and feasible for Wyndham and its shareholders. Despite our extensive and genuine engagement, Choice has addressed none of these issues. It has, instead, adopted this completely misleading tactic to divert attention away from its own unwillingness to address the realities.” — Stephen Holmes, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Read story

“[A class-action lawsuit against CoStar has the potential to] rock the very foundation of how hotels conduct their revenue management activities, how anyone – other than those who pay for ad hoc data – can use the ‘comp set’ data so frequently used in our industry, whether the data gathering and supplying would continue and, frankly, the very existence of STR as the ‘go to’ data provider.” — Michael Shindler, Four Corners Advisors Read story

“We will be patient on growth. We want to learn the market and operating intricacies intimately before placing more chips. We think in a few months we will explore additional opportunities; we’ve positioned ourselves as a preferred buyer.” — Shaan Bhatia, JRK Property Holdings Read story

“I’d say that’s a destination property with the demand feeders around it. Then [add in] our ability to invest on a value-add basis and bring the capital and expertise to take that asset to the next stage of its ownership life. It hit all the buttons of what we wanted to do.” — Sean Hehir, Trinity Investments Read story

“When the brand develops critical mass, I think we will take over the management in one way or the other or the team will collaborate. It will not stay as a purely distributional [partnership].” — Puneet Chhatwal, Indian Hotel Co. Ltd. Read story