Virginia Beach resort-area hotels prove good bet for investors

Lodges throughout the nation have experienced sizeable economic losses around the past two decades. This has not been the circumstance for Virginia Beach front resort place accommodations, and the market’s sturdy functionality ought to appear as no surprise.

My associates at Grand Bay Advisors and I broker transactions with hotel brand names in the course of the United States — Marriott, Hilton, InterContinental Accommodations Group and Preference Accommodations, to title a few. Whilst significantly of our organization is carried out outdoors Hampton Streets, it is gratifying for our Norfolk-centered agency to operate with accommodations here locally as properly.

More than the previous couple of several years, our advisory team has closed on Virginia Seashore Oceanfront hotel offers that symbolize a lot more than $60 million in product sales for our customers. Inspite of the economic problem that countrywide lodge markets have confronted in excess of the past decade (such as for the duration of the pandemic), the resort area has held its individual — and then some.

Since getting recruited to Hampton Roadways from Washington, D.C., in 1999 to open and operate the initial Marriott-branded lodge at the Oceanfront, I acknowledged that the current market was underserved and underpriced. The very first spending budget I introduced for the lodge was $1 million in income previously mentioned what the entrepreneurs ended up projecting. The resort hit my numbers all through the very first total yr.

That is when I realized: Virginia Beach’s resort resort overall performance was a nicely-kept mystery.

Most persons may possibly be unaware that right after 9/11, when virtually each and every hotel industry in the state contracted, two marketplaces grew 12 months about year. A person was Philadelphia, which grew at about 4%. The other was the Virginia Beach vacation resort, which grew at about 11%.

The next wonderful challenge for the hotel sector came throughout the Fantastic Economic downturn, when practically every single hotel current market in the U.S. contracted. The Virginia Beach resort place continued to develop 4-6% every yr from 2008 to 2011. It was not till 2012 that expansion last but not least slowed, to about 2-3%, thanks to sequestration. However, the resort marketplace under no circumstances expert a contraction for the duration of this period, even though most other U.S. resort marketplaces did.

In current memory, not right up until COVID struck did the Virginia Seashore vacation resort working experience a contraction or 12 months-over-12 months decline. Even then, the downturn was more quick-lived and much less remarkable than most of the rest of the place.

During the pandemic’s early days, most U.S. resort marketplaces professional occupancy declines of 50% or a lot more. Just 90 times after the March 2020 U.S. lockdown, Virginia Beach front spot hotels were building 70-80% pre-pandemic occupancies. Only 15 months right after the first lockdown, Virginia Beach’s high quality-branded inns presently had been exceeding pre-pandemic occupancy levels. For the duration of the 12 months beginning in May perhaps 2021, premium-branded Virginia Beach front area lodges exceeded pre-pandemic occupancies in 6 or a lot more months. Nevertheless, occupancy progress was not the sole contributor to Virginia Beach’s outstanding performance all through the pandemic. Ordinary day-to-day charge (ADR) was up in 2021 in excess of 2019 for many of Virginia Beach’s resort-space motels.

Smith Vacation Analysis, which publishes hotel information for U.S. and global marketplaces, ranked the Norfolk/Virginia Beach resort market place as No. 1 in conditions of restoration throughout substantially of the to start with calendar year of the pandemic. Though Norfolk motels are included in the performance facts, the markets differ greatly with the Oceanfront resort driving significantly of that constructive knowledge.

To even more solidify the vacation resort area’s name, several Oceanfront motels are closing in on the $200 Income for each out there space (RevPAR) mark. The hospitality sector takes advantage of this metric to evaluate a property’s capacity to fill its out there rooms at a variety of rates. A roughly $200 RevPAR is found mostly in gateway marketplaces, like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and D.C.

We believe it will be only a matter of time — maybe this yr or future — when Virginia Beach’s vacation resort place fulfills that benchmark. As huge mixed-use tasks are designed at the resort’s North End around Neptune Park and to the south at Rudy Loop, a $200 RevPAR could become the normal for the nicest Oceanfront resorts, this sort of as the new Marriott Resort Virginia Seashore Oceanfront property and the new Embassy Suites Hotel scheduled to open in just the upcoming 12 months.

Nevertheless some could be surprised to study that Virginia Beach front resort accommodations outperform most non-gateway markets all around the U.S., my associates and I are not surprised. With simple obtain to people from the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, mixed with a solid corporate base and government and government contracting existence, the Oceanfront functions an excellent combine of small business and leisure that gives the market benefits usually observed only in gateway marketplaces.

Matthew Winston is the co-founder of Grand Bay Advisors, a nationwide complete-provider hospitality asset management, brokerage and consulting agency in Norfolk.