SPECIAL REPORT
JAY SHAH
FILE
BORN JULY 17 , 1968
PARENTS HASU AND HERSHA SHAH bought their first property , the Starlite Motel near Harrisburg , Pennsylvania , in 1978 , followed by the Red Rose motel , where Jay would make up rooms , help with laundry and check in guests on Saturday night .
IN 1990 , he earned a bachelor ’ s degree from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration , followed by an MBA and a JD from the Fox School of Business and Beasley School of Law at Temple University .
ON AUGUST 20 , 1994 , he married Susie Shah and subsequently had twins , daughter Aryana and son Avikar .
UNTIL 1999 he was founder and principal at Shah Ray & Byler , a boutique real estate and construction law firm based in Philadelphia .
FROM 1999 TO 2003 , he served as managing director of the Hersha Group , a hotel development , ownership and management organization with 20 hotels in the northeastern United States and was intimately involved in the operational and transactional activities of the group ’ s regional real estate development and management company .
ON JANUARY 1 , 2006 , he became CEO at Hersha Hospitality Trust after serving as president and chief operating officer from September 2003 to December 2005 .
SERVED ON THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES of the Please Touch Museum , the Philadelphia Children ’ s Museum .
I FEEL LIKE THERE ’ S A COLLAPSE OF TIME , AND IF YOU DON ’ T HAVE A STRONG SET OF VALUES PEOPLE ARE GOING TO BE MORE APT TO LOSE THEIR WAY , JUST BECAUSE THE PACE OF CHANGE IS FAST .
Hersha Hospitality Trust went public in May 2008 .
business in the late 1990s and launch a small hotel REIT with six limited-service hotels and a market capitalization of maybe US $ 50 million – barely receiving any attention from Wall Street .
Since then , good fortune , hard work and a very fortuitous decision to pivot the portfolio toward limited-service developments in major East Coast metro markets has moved Hersha Hospitality Trust into
JAY SHAH
the big time , with luxury properties , like its flagship Rittenhouse near company headquarters in Philadelphia , part of the mix . Today , the company owns 49 hotels and 7,666 rooms with an enterprise value north of US $ 2.5 billion . Hersha continues to recycle capital , upgrade the quality of its portfolio to generate robust cash flow and grow its percentage of the public float .
Shah says the only person who understood Hersha ’ s new urban strategy was Steve Rushmore , founder of HVS , as too many people thought they couldn ’ t get a rate premium close to full-service hotels . “ Our view was , if you built a purpose-built , 3-star hotel , you were able to tag along within a 15 % to 20 % discount of the full-service guys ,” Shah says . “ It turned out we were right , because when we opened that first Hampton Inn in New York City it was running with the rate premium and 90 % occupancy in the second month .”
Shah says his father might not have
32 hotelsmag . com November 2018