HOFTEL

HOFTEL is the world’s leading association of hotel property investors – the only one which is both international and multi-operator. It is specifically designed to represent the disparate owners of hotels and provide them with a voice as a distinct industry sector. Why was it established? Because hotel property investors are the groups which provide most of the capital for the sector, but are smaller and sometimes less experienced in the sector and thus less powerful than their main business counterparties – the hotel brands, the OTAs and major sharing economy firms like AirBnB. This puts owners at a significant disadvantage in many of their relationships. However, the sector has been institutionalising quickly and can only benefit from greater visibility and coherence. HOFTEL seeks to accelerate this process. We provide an association and a forum for hotel real estate companies which receive rents or pay management fees as well as for hotel franchisees who both own and manage properties, but pay a third party to provide the brand and marketing. Our members range from multinationals to single-hotel companies and include institutional investors, private entrepreneurs, family offices, sovereigns, funds and developers. Thus, our members may be essentially property companies who take little active part in the day-to-day running of the hotels or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, highly active owner/operator property managers. That said, we do not invite owner-operators with their own brand to be members, unless they also pay fees to a franchisor or manager on some of their other properties nor companies which operate hotels for third parties under their own brands, nor pure asset-managers who are not investors. This exclusivity allows HOFTEL to focus on serving a specific membership base. To date, HOFTEL has members with hotels and serviced apartments in around 35 countries, which control between them hospitality real estate assets of about US$ 70 billion.