Hotel Development Insights from Hospitality Industry Veteran

Glenn: Hey, everybody. It’s your hospitality. Friend Glenn reporting from the lodging conference. I got David Kuperberg, Managing Director of Real Estate with Majestic Hospitality. But first, let me thank our friends over at Unifocus. Unifocus technology that drives value. Please check them out at unifocus.com. Speaking of driving value, that’s kind of what your whole business is all about, right? Bringing value in the development side. Exactly. You know, it’s great to be here.

David: First of all, Glenn, thanks for having me I appreciate it. Yeah. No, I just joined Majestic Hospitality. You know, I was with chief development Officer Dream Hotel for 12 years. Grew the company sold it to Hyatt three years ago. They came knocking and spent the last two and a half years at Hyatt. And officially, this is my semi-retirement. But you know, I couldn’t get away from it.

Glenn: All right, so dumb question number one. Is this your dream job?

David: This is my dream job. You know, look, I’ve been on the brand and management side for so long. It’s fun to be on the other side a little bit and work closer with the owners. Yeah, the idea is to get more on the development side.

Glenn: Yeah. So. All right, so now let’s talk. Let’s focus on the owners. Right. You spend a lot of time speaking about the property level. What did the owners thinking particularly when it comes to creating new properties. And I should say these guys are global. We were just talking about a Belize property and a Philippines, a Singapore property in the Philippines. Right as well. Yep, yep.

David: Look I know very well the brand side and coming in and the brand demands of what they want. The owners, it’s a little bit of a disconnect sometimes. And so we have done a really good job of kind of being that go between and owners relations and kind of being a go between and helping on the development side, you know, we find there’s a lot of folks out there with a great piece of land, but they never built a hotel before. Right. And between me and my partners at majestic we have the capability to help them kind of bring their vision to life, and.

Glenn: Yeah. And what the great thing is being that you know the brand so well, should they decide to build a branded property, you’re able to help them work through all of those things, answer those they don’t know what they don’t know kind of scenarios. Right?

David: Yeah. You know, I always questioned being on the other side of the table from the brands. Are they happy to see me or are they not? You know, because I could, you.

Glenn: Know, I guess.

David: You don’t know.

Glenn: I guess you don’t want them to be happy to see you, right?

David: I think it’s kind of mixed. I think they know that I know a lot and what they what’s capable and what they can do and what they can’t do. And when they say no, I can call their BS and say, hey, I know you’ve done it 12 other times, so let me tell you why. But also a lot of these guys they work with are first time hotel owners and never built anything. So I think having adults in the room really kind of they appreciate that.

Glenn: Okay. So I’m a let’s say I’m a wannabe hotel owner. I’ve got this great piece of land, but I don’t know what to do. Would you come in and say you should build a upscale independent hotel or an economy hotel or whatever it might be?

David: Yeah. So over at majestic, we really can start from the very beginning kind of site planning help with design and then really kind of figure out programming and what’s the best brand and take it all the way to opening.

Glenn: Okay. So how are you thinking about that in the sense of you’re building? Let’s just say you’re building a resort. Just a plain resort. I don’t, you know, we don’t have to get into the statistics, the facts of it. But one in the United States versus one in the Philippines versus one in Belize, you can’t you can’t just wash, rinse, repeat, right. Correct?

David: Correct. And look, we the good news is we’ve been doing this for 15 years. And a lot of our work has been international historically. So we definitely know a lot of these markets that we’re working in and Belize and the Philippines and so on.

Glenn: Yeah. You need to understand design distinctions, governmental distinctions, all of these kinds of things.

David: Yes. I mean, we’re dealing with visas down in Belize right now and kind of getting the workers, you know, visas and how that works. So we’re learning a lot as we go, but we definitely have a lot of deep knowledge also.

Glenn: Yeah. What are you most excited about now as you’re you’re moving forward into this semi-retirement?

David: Yeah. I mean look, I’ve, I love the fact that I’ve, you know, helped people grow and made money and it’s good to be on the other side and kind of be part of the development. You know, part of the brand is you kind of do a deal and you move on to the next one, whereas I’d rather get my teeth into a few of them and really kind of be be there all the way through.

Glenn: I love that, and you can be creative and hopefully, you know, create something different that we haven’t seen before. I bet that’s like a.

David: Exactly, exactly. And look, we’re this Belize project you mentioned is a great example. This is a deal that I actually did with Hyatt. And I think that things are a little bit rocky, but we’re able to step in and help stabilize that relationship, and we’re going to help them develop the brand of condos next door and help sell the condos. So I think it’s a win win for everybody.

Glenn: All right. Make sure you slip me the number of that place to get a condo. Definitely, definitely. All right. Awesome. Hey, thanks so much for watching. We really appreciate you guys being here. Please like, share, subscribe this video and check out my friends over at Unit Focus. You guys rock by.