BUENOS AIRES-The Chicago-based firm has hired Santiago Berraondo as a VP to expand the company’s efforts in South America. The company is trying to expand its reach in the southern-most countries, including Argentina, Chile and Peru.
Berraondo most recently served as an associate director at HVS International. He has specialized in hospitality consulting in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru and Columbia. Berraondo will work in JLL’s strategic advisory and asset management practice.
International investors are looking very hard at the southern cone of South America, JLL Hotels EVP Clay Dickinson tells GlobeSt.com. “We need feet on the street, people with local knowledge,” he says. “We’re very well established in Brazil, but we’re moving into the rest of the South America markets to anticipate the moves investors are making.”
He says hotel investment in 2012 is moving away from established cities such as London and Paris and into the emerging markets such as China, India and South America. “There’s just not much growth left in the mature markets,” Dickinson says. “The economic growth rates in South America are two-to-three times the United States’ rates and three-to-five times that of Europe’s. Down south, they have almost three decades of pent up demand for all sorts of real estate, and a real dearth of hotel supply.”
Argentina, for example, saw 6.9% GDP growth in 2011, Shannon Robertson, a regional director at JLL, said in a statement. The company already has 1,500 employees throughout the Caribbean Islands, Central and South America.
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