Speakers Stress Opportunity in Current Market

[IMGCAP(1)]NEW YORK CITY-The economy does not look good at the moment, agreed keynote speaker Mitesh Shah, senior managing principal and CEO of Noble Investment Group, and speaker Pat Ford, president of Lodging Econometrics at Tuesday’s second annual RealShare Hotel Investment and Finance Summit, sponsored by Real Estate Media. The conference, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel here, drew more than 350 attendees.

Shah and his Noble Investment Group had seen a lot of broken deals and narrower booking windows for hotels over the last quarter. Ford noted the swift drop in the GDP and a “tightening” of lending, which spiked in 2007, based on a Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey. There was also a lot of foreign capital in the market. But the two speakers did not see a hopeless market.

[IMGCAP(2)]“There is doubt as to whether we are in a recession,” Shah said. “I’m not sure that it matters.” He continued to explain that there is a lot of opportunity in the current market if one exercises discipline and returns to the basic techniques for successful hospitality investment: buying at the right base, branding and market location. He also reminded attendees that a lower dollar means that foreign travel to the US is up, especially from Canada, Europe, India and China.