Gaylord Entertainment Buying Waikiki Hotel for $107M

HONOLULU, HI-Gaylord Entertainment has put the 716-room Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel here under contract for $107 million. The Nashville, TN-based hospitality and entertainment company says it is negotiating with potential partners that would provide a majority of the equity required to close on the 716-room property.Renovated in 2002, the Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel is located near Waikiki Beach and Kapiolani Park. The 23-story Main Tower houses 644 guest rooms with private lanais, while the adjacent nine-story Mauka Tower has 72 rooms. The complex has 19,400 sf of retail and restaurant space, 2,900 sf of meeting space and an outdoor swimming pool with views of the Pacific Ocean. Gaylord officials say finding a majority equity partner for the acquisition “will be an important factor in the board’s consideration of the transaction. To that end, Gaylord officials say they are in negotiations with “several interested parties.”Gaylord president Colin Reed says this transaction falls in line with its strategy of investing modestly in highly prized vacation assets and securing long-term management contracts. In addition, he says the hotel will be an important asset for ResortQuest, the company’s vacation rental property management company, which acquired Aston and its management portfolio about 18 months ago. The purchase gave ResortQuest 12 vacation properties managed by ResortQuest in the immediate area of the Waikiki Beach Hotel and 26 in all of Hawaii.A company source tells GlobeSt.com that the Aston Wakiki Beach Hotel is the only one that is not a condo-hotel, but did not say definitively whether the hotels’ rooms would be sold off to individual investors. “At some point we may convert it to condos,” says the source.Gaylord Entertainment owns and operates three industry-leading brands including Gaylord Hotels, its network of upscale, meetings-focused resorts; ResortQuest; and the Grand Ole Opry, a weekly showcase of country music performers. The company’s entertainment brands and properties include the Radisson Hotel Opryland, Ryman Auditorium, General Jackson Showboat, Springhouse Links, Wildhorse Saloon, and WSM-AM.