Hotel Owner Xenia Mulls Nashville As Market For Expansion

Hotel owners continue to eye Nashville, whose room boom is well documented (more than 15,700 rooms are in the pipeline, according to Lodging Econometrics). Recently Xenia Hotels & Resorts let it be known that Nashville is on its radar, provided the opportunity is right.

Orlando-based Xenia, a REIT that owns 42 hotels nationwide under various flags — Marriott, Kimpton, Hyatt, Aston, Fairmont, and Loews — noted in its most recent earnings call that it has the wherewithal for acquisitions, though it has mostly been a seller lately. The company has over $250M of cash available, along with a fully undrawn $400M line.

"So we've clearly made all the moves to put ourselves in a position to be an inquisitor for the right kind of opportunities that would come around," CEO Marcel Verbaas said. "It really depends on the long-term outlook of potential opportunities that would come up and how aggressive we'll be on those."

Xenia will continue to focus on the top 25 lodging markets, which Verbaas called key leader destinations.

"But we're very much focused on what the supply picture looks like in individual markets, whether we want to actually get into some of those markets in the current part of the cycle," Verbaas said.

"There are certain markets where we're not currently where we'd also take a look, like Minneapolis, Charlotte, Nashville, those types of markets." 

Xenia is not jumping into any of those growth markets without a careful look. Verbaas said the firm would have to be comfortable with each market's supply and growth.