Masters of Moments #6: Vamsi Bonthala - CEO of Arbor Lodging Partners - Best practices for Uniting Hotel Operators & Institutional Investors
Vamsi Bonthala is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Arbor Lodging Partners, an award-winning national hotel investment firm. Vamsi has overseen approximately $1 billion of transaction volume since the inception of Arbor Lodging Partners, where he leads all company activities including general corporate strategy, investor relations, strategic relationships, acquisitions, dispositions, and asset management.
On this episode, Jake and Vamsi discuss:
- Breaking down Vamsi's first deal
- Growing Arbor Lodging and building a vertically integrated management team
- Maintaining efficient deal pipelines
- Converting Hotels to Multifamily
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Topics:
(1:50) - Vamsi’s journey into Hospitality
(6:38) - What happened in your first deal?
(8:05) - How did you raise money for the deal?
(10:41) - Looking back, what were some of the questions you should have asked in your first deal?
(12:14) - How did you structure the deal with investors?
(12:57) - Hospitality as a complex asset
(14:51) - Were you looking for broken RE deals early on in your career?
(17:15) - When did you start to grow your team?
(18:57) - What made you decide to bring management in-house?
(21:20) - Did institutional partners start to flow in once you became vertically integrated?
(22:04) - How has your philosophy been shaped by doing deals in markets outside your own backyard?
(25:36) - How do you and your partner figure out what deals and markets you’ll focus on?
(28:21) - How do you keep your acquisitions team incentivized and motivated?
(31:45) - How do you make sure your deal pipeline is as efficient as possible?
(32:52) - What is your strategy for 2023?
(34:58) - Are you looking at converting Office to Hotel?
(39:40) - Do you have separate capital for Debt and Equity?
(42:36) - How do you make the economics work at scale?
(45:26) - Why do you work with institutional partners vs. syndicating deals?
(53:30) - At what point did you start viewing the management side as its own business?
(58:31) - What’s something surprising that you’re doing in the management company?
(1:00:03) - What tools are you using to maintain a pulse on the business?
(1:05:22) - How do you approach hybrid work with your teams?
(1:07:10) - How do you convert hotels to multifamily?
(1:18:13) - What is your favorite hotel?