"It went relatively smooth," recounts Ramsey Shilling Commercial Real Estate Services principal Frank Buckley, whose California-based organization brokered the deal. The first of what Buckley says he hopes will be an increasing number of global assignments for Ramsey Shilling involved players spanning the world, with participants not only in Vietnam and London, but also China, Japan and Singapore.

Although due diligence of the property was "accelerated," Buckley tells GlobeSt.com that competent multi-national counsel and cooperation among the parties carried the day. The investors paid out $22 million in cash and assumed a level of underlying debt on the property, which caters to a mix of business and leisure travel.

Vietnam's countenance as a communist county did offer its complexities. "Unlike conventional democratic real estate transactions, international deals like the Omni Hotel often involve complex multi-party agreements that have more to do with the sale of stock and the assignment of government-required licenses than they do with the sale of land, buildings and furnishings," explains Buckley, whose firm has previously focused on its home base in Los Angeles and Hollywood.