HEARD ON THE STREET
FINDING COMMONALITY BETWEEN WALL STREET AND MAIN STREET.
By DAVID EISEN
The hotel industry is a peculiar business. It’ s one where a single asset can have multiple hands in the pie: the owner of the real estate, the operator of the real estate, the brand affixed to the real estate. Oftentimes, each has competing motivations within that triangle: the owner wants profit; the operator pushes revenue; and the brand, well, it really wants to add more hotels. It’ s seemingly diametric, but somehow, has become the norm— and worked!
A similar sort of antithesis exists between institutional capital and private equity that gun for huge, often highly leveraged returns and smaller real estate firms firmly planted in hotel real estate investment with a tendency toward longer asset hold periods.
At the Hunter Conference, which swapped out its longtime location at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis for the Signia by Hilton Atlanta Georgia World Congress Center, disparities— and parities— between Wall Street’ s notions of investment compared to Main Street’ s were put under the microscope during two back-to-back panel discussions.
Hotels are a unique asset class, as Mitch Patel, founder & CEO of Vision Hospitality Group, made clear— a service business that is layered atop real estate. This structure makes it decidedly different from other asset types.“ Wall Street forgets this is a people business,” he said, adding that because hotels are a service business, and in an epoch of hyper transparency, people— those serving customers— have the ability to impact cash flow positively or negatively.“ A 4.8 versus 4.0 rating can be the decider between success and mediocrity,” Patel said.“ There are many levers to pull, unlike other asset classes.”
Fellow hotel owner Bo Patel, COO of Coury Hospitality, shared Patel’ s view of how staffing a hotel has a direct impact on success and performance.“ GSS [ guest satisfaction scores ] matter,” he said.“ That gets lost. The customer isn’ t just going to come.”
Main Street capital sometimes acts differently than institutional capital, Mitch Patel offered. Both invest with partners that fund these enterprises, but, as Patel suggested, not all investment partners are equal.“ We have a disciplined model
The Main Street panel, from left: Moderator Teague Hunter, CEO of Hunter Advisors; Alpesh Patel, owner of Kana Hotel Group; Bo Patel, COO of Coury Hospitality; Mitch Patel, CEO of Vision Hospitality Group; and Azim Saju, CEO of ARK Holdings.
76 hotelsmag. com May Mar / Apr June 2026