Virginia Beach resort-area hotels prove good bet for investors

Motels across the nation have experienced sizeable monetary losses more than the previous two many years. This has not been the case for Virginia Beach front vacation resort region motels, and the market’s sturdy performance must come as no shock.

My associates at Grand Bay Advisors and I broker transactions with hotel manufacturers throughout the United States — Marriott, Hilton, InterContinental Inns Group and Alternative Motels, to title a handful of. Even though a great deal of our business is executed outside the house Hampton Streets, it is gratifying for our Norfolk-based company to operate with lodges right here domestically as effectively.

Above the previous couple of decades, our advisory group has shut on Virginia Seashore Oceanfront lodge specials that symbolize extra than $60 million in product sales for our consumers. Regardless of the economic challenge that national lodge marketplaces have faced around the earlier decade (which include throughout the pandemic), the resort space has held its individual — and then some.

Considering that being recruited to Hampton Roadways from Washington, D.C., in 1999 to open and run the initially Marriott-branded resort at the Oceanfront, I recognized that the current market was underserved and underpriced. The first price range I introduced for the lodge was $1 million in income over what the house owners had been projecting. The resort strike my figures throughout the initial total year.

That is when I realized: Virginia Beach’s resort resort efficiency was a very well-saved top secret.

Most folks could be unaware that soon after 9/11, when just about each individual hotel market place in the place contracted, two markets grew yr more than 12 months. One was Philadelphia, which grew at about 4%. The other was the Virginia Seaside resort, which grew at about 11%.

The following wonderful problem for the hotel industry arrived during the Wonderful Economic downturn, when almost each individual hotel industry in the U.S. contracted. The Virginia Seashore resort place ongoing to improve 4-6% every calendar year from 2008 to 2011. It was not till 2012 that expansion finally slowed, to all-around 2-3%, because of to sequestration. Nevertheless, the vacation resort market by no means seasoned a contraction all through this period, though most other U.S. hotel markets did.

In new memory, not right up until COVID struck did the Virginia Seaside vacation resort working experience a contraction or yr-more than-12 months decline. Even then, the downturn was extra limited-lived and considerably less dramatic than most of the rest of the nation.

During the pandemic’s early days, most U.S. resort markets knowledgeable occupancy declines of 50% or a lot more. Just 90 days soon after the March 2020 U.S. lockdown, Virginia Beach space resorts were being building 70-80% pre-pandemic occupancies. Only 15 months after the original lockdown, Virginia Beach’s premium-branded lodges presently were exceeding pre-pandemic occupancy amounts. In the course of the 12 months starting off in May well 2021, high quality-branded Virginia Seaside location motels exceeded pre-pandemic occupancies in six or extra months. On the other hand, occupancy advancement was not the sole contributor to Virginia Beach’s amazing overall performance for the duration of the pandemic. Regular daily level (ADR) was up in 2021 above 2019 for many of Virginia Beach’s vacation resort-space lodges.

Smith Journey Investigate, which publishes resort info for U.S. and world-wide markets, rated the Norfolk/Virginia Seashore resort sector as No. 1 in terms of recovery through substantially of the to start with calendar year of the pandemic. However Norfolk resorts are incorporated in the overall performance facts, the marketplaces vary tremendously with the Oceanfront vacation resort driving substantially of that positive info.

To further solidify the resort area’s reputation, various Oceanfront motels are closing in on the $200 Earnings per readily available home (RevPAR) mark. The hospitality field uses this metric to assess a property’s ability to fill its readily available rooms at many prices. A approximately $200 RevPAR is seen mostly in gateway markets, like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and D.C.

We consider it will be only a make a difference of time — possibly this calendar year or next — when Virginia Beach’s vacation resort place fulfills that benchmark. As substantial combined-use assignments are created at the resort’s North Stop close to Neptune Park and to the south at Rudy Loop, a $200 RevPAR could become the common for the nicest Oceanfront lodges, this kind of as the new Marriott Vacation resort Virginia Seaside Oceanfront residence and the new Embassy Suites Resort scheduled to open up within just the following year.

Though some may be astonished to master that Virginia Beach front resort hotels outperform most non-gateway markets all over the U.S., my associates and I are not stunned. With easy access to guests from the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, put together with a robust company foundation and govt and governing administration contracting presence, the Oceanfront options an perfect blend of small business and leisure that offers the industry pros ordinarily found only in gateway marketplaces.

Matthew Winston is the co-founder of Grand Bay Advisors, a national comprehensive-company hospitality asset administration, brokerage and consulting agency in Norfolk.