Hotel at San Diego Golf Course is Top Trade of 2024
L.A. investment firm snares Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines for $165M.
A Los Angeles-based investment firm has acquired the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines for $165M in the priciest hotel trade in San Diego thus far this year.
Through its $350M Hospitality Fund, JRK Property Holdings bought the 394-key hotel, which sits on an oceanfront site adjacent to the Torrey Pines Golf Course, from Dallas-based Braemar Hotels & Resorts, the company announced.
Proximity to the famous golf course, a perennial venue for major PGA Tour events—the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines offers exclusive tee times on the course—has made the Hilton, located about 15 miles north of downtown San Diego, one of the top-performing lodgings in the region.
According to Eastdil Secured, which marketed the property for sale, the oceanfront resort has outperformed the competitive market in occupancy, ADR and RevPAR every year since 2016.
In addition to guest rooms with balconies overlooking the golf course and Pacific Ocean, the hotel features three food and beverage venues, an outdoor pool, a fitness center, tennis and pickleball courts and more than 65K SF of meeting space.
“This was a rare opportunity to acquire a generational California oceanfront location with growing leisure demand, potentially negative supply, and in one of the strongest and most coveted life sciences corridors in the country,” said Shaan Bhatia, head of hotel investment for JRK, in a statement.
“The property generates significant cash flow with a large rate gap to higher-end resorts in the market. During our hold period, we intend to invest significant capital to revamp [the] guest experience,” Bhatia said.
According to the San Diego Tourism Authority, the region attracted about 30.5M visitors in 2023, driving hotel occupancy rates to 73%.
The Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines is in the heart of San Diego’s life science sector, within two miles of the University of California San Diego, Scripps Research Institute and the Salk Institute.
JRK said it intends to acquire more than $500M of additional hospitality assets during the next 12-18 months. Its Hospitality Fund targets transactions of more than $30M, focusing on full- and select-service hotels for opportunistic and value-added investments, the release said.
JRK’s hotel portfolio includes the Oceana Santa Monica, the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs (five-property Marriott-branded portfolio in Austin), and two Hyatt-branded hotels in San Juan.