MIAMI-The Miami office of Holliday  Fenoglio  Fowler is marketing a portfolio of three Courtyard by Marriott hotels in San Jose, Costa Rica, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and Port of Spain, Trinidad. These properties are doing well, says Dan Carlo, senior managing director at HFF’s Miami office. Their collective RevPAR is 50% higher than the brand-name average for the over 850 Courtyard Hotels, he says.

“It is an institutional investment group from the Northeast that is selling the hotels,” says, Carlo. “They bought them at a good price and now see this as an opportunity to harvest their gains.  We’ve had tremendous success in financing properties in the last 90 days in Houston, Nashville and Indianapolis, because the debt markets are back considerably,” he says.

Carlo says that this is a good time to market hotels because the sector is beginning to recover. According to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers May 2010 report called “Hospitality & Leisure: Hospitality Directions US,”  hotel occupancy rates should increase by 3.5% in 2010 resulting in a 1.8% increase in RevPar, the first annual increase in this metric since 2007.

“Economic conditions support increased travel demand by businesses and households and with construction starts slowing, hotel supply growth is decelerating,” according to the report, which adds that, given these conditions, there should be a 6.3% RevPar growth in 2011.

The Marriott Courtyard hotels are aimed at mid-level business travelers, says Carlo. These travelers want to go somewhere which is secure and consistent, he says. Plus, the hotel has designed a new prototype  which caters to this type of traveler who misses the comforts of home, says Carlo. These hotels are equipped with a mini-theaters, snack bars and work areas where business travelers can hook up their laptops, he says.

The Central American and Caribbean hotels being marketed are efficiency run, says Carlo, noting that wage scales in these countries are lower than in the US. “But it isn’t just the wage scale; it is the operating costs too,” he says.

There is no asking price for the three hotels, says Carlo. But the price per room will be comparable to what is seen in some select service hotels in US urban markets such as Philadelphia or Baltimore, he says. “I am not saying these hotels will sell for $400,000 a key like they might if they were in New York, but they will sell for a nice, healthy number.”