Industry experts at the Hotel Data Conference provided some great advice about reinventing obsolete hotels in a panel discussion moderated by H&LA’s Laurel Keller.

Published by: Dan Kubacki/Hotel News Now
Published: September 2016

Owners who have an aging hotel in their portfolio or who acquire a new asset in need of improvements know the importance of keeping up with renovations so properties don’t become obsolete.

Hoteliers who participated in the “Reinventing obsolete hotels” panel at the 2016 Hotel Data Conference addressed some of the common issues when renovating, as well as what improvements should receive top priority.

Laurel Keller, VP of Hotel & Leisure Advisors, moderated the panel and kicked off the discussion by citing some statistics on closed hotels. According to STR, parent company of Hotel News Now, most hotels that have closed were between 30 and 50 years old, and the economy segment led all other chain scales for most closed properties.

“You can see that somewhere in the 31-40 year range that most of the properties are closing, so I guess that’s at the end of their financial life or their useful life you would say,” Keller said. “The economy segment is the one that is closing the most. We were chatting about that before this, and we’re not entirely certain if that’s because of the physical obsolescence of economy-grade, exterior-corridor properties or maybe they just weren’t built as soundly. I don’t know; it’s up for debate.”

To read the entire article at Hotel News Now, click here.