From left: Mark Gordon of Tribeca Associates, Ron Burkle a stakeholder in Morgans Hotel Group, Gary Barnett of Extell Development and Tommy Hilfiger, who purchased the MetLife clocktower

From the August issue: For the last few years, investing in New York hotels was like scoring the Presidential Suite at the Plaza — an experience reserved only for a select few, primary real estate investment trusts. Indeed, as the stock market roared back, these publicly traded REITs were able to raise capital almost as easily as dialing up room service.
Recently, though, other types of investors — most notably management companies, private equity firms, government investment arms and hedge funds — have edged into the New York market, convinced, it seems, that hotel values in the city still have a ways to climb. That is despite the fact that hotels have already rapidly risen in value after taking a severe recessionary beating in 2009.
“It took a while for those outside the lodging industry to realize what was happening to New York lodging,” said Bjorn Hanson, a hotel specialist at New York University’s Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management. “It has all created appeal for the nontraditional investor.” [more]

Veronica Mainetti heads the Sorgente Group’s U.S. office.

From the January issue:
For more than a year, foreign investors have been sitting on the
sidelines waiting for a sign that the capital markets were beginning to
thaw and the time was right to invest in New York real estate.
One of the first big tests for them may be coming from an unlikely
source: the Sorgente Group, a Rome-based investment firm that has
already acquired some of the city’s most iconic properties and is
currently negotiating to buy another — the famed Woolworth Building in
Lower Manhattan.
In addition to those Gotham properties, the group, headed by
investor Valter Mainetti, is reportedly in talks to acquire some of the
most sought-after buildings in the United States, including San
Francisco’s TransAmerica Pyramid.  More

From the October issue: Keeping heads in beds has not been easy for New York City’s hotel
industry in this economy. Not only are tourists cutting back on
expenses, but companies — including those that not too long ago
readily put up their employees at five-star hotels — are also
massively scaling back.
In this month’s Q & A, hotel experts and operators talked to The Real Deal about why the hospitality industry has fallen further here than it has nationally.
They said revenue per room, or RevPAR, is down between 20 and 30
percent and that the luxury hotel market (not surprisingly) is getting
crushed hardest.