Waterfront Hotel in Tampa Aims for Record Price

With hotel investors signaling a greater willingness to take on large deals again, a renovated luxury hotel on the Gulf Coast waterfront in Tampa is aiming to join the list of mega-deals in 2024.

The Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, a 443-room luxury venue in the Westshore district, is on the selling block with a valuation of $220M, starting the bidding at $500K per key—which would be the most lucrative hotel deal ever in the Tampa market.

The owner, a partnership between Chicago-based GEM Realty Capital and Boca Raton-based IP Capital Partners, has tapped JLL to list the Grand Hyatt, according to a Green Street alert.

The Grand Hyatt, which was built in 1986 and completed a $31M renovation and upgrade last year, sits on 21 acres at 2900 Bayport Drive in proximity to Tampa International Airport. The property includes a 13-story building connected by a boardwalk to five one- and two-story casitas with additional rooms.

Gem and IP Capital paid $146M to buy the Grand Hyatt in 2019 as part of a $226M package deal that included an adjacent 266K SF office building known as Bayport Plaza. Hyatt Corp. has an agreement to manage the hotel through 2050, including extensions.

Demand for luxury hotels in Tampa is surging along with domestic travel, with revenue notching $319 per room in the first four months of 2024, well above the pre-pandemic average of $250 per room for the same period in 2019, according to CoStar data.

A sale of the Grand Hyatt at the estimated valuation would be the largest single-asset hotel deal in the Tampa Bay market, topping the $214M purchase by Host Hotels & Resorts of the 350-room Beach House Suites by the Don CeSar in St. Pete Beach in 2017, according to Green Street’s Sales Comps Database.

So far this year, seven single-property hotel sales worth at least $100M have traded, encompassing a total of $1.74B. During the same period last year, there were 16 $100M-plus hotel trades totaling about $3B before the volatile lending market stymied activity.

Last month, Blackstone sold the Arizona Biltmore, a 705-room hotel in Phoenix, to a Henderson Park venture for $705M, which is about $1M per room. Blackstone recently announced that it has a buyer lined up for the Turtle Bay Resort, a 450-room hotel in Hawaii, in a deal valued at $725M, or $1.6M per room, that is expected to close in the third quarter.