Successfully Managing A Hotel Portfolio Transaction

The last year or two in particular have seen a number of hotel portfolio sales by some of the large hotel operating companies. This trend has been increasing and several portfolios have either been sold in the last year or are on the market for hundreds of millions of pounds. This trend is part of the separation of "bricks from brains" that is believed to be the way that hotel operating companies can release capital from their asset-heavy balance sheets and improve their overall return on capital employed.

These disposals in the past were often accompanied by a lease back of the hotel property. More recently, the trend has leant heavily towards sale-and-manage-backs - the disposal of the property assets and business accompanied by a management agreement back to the operating company.