While most hotel REITs chase full-service and luxury hotels in major markets, Chatham Lodging Trust continues to focus on what it knows best: extended-stay and select-service hotels. And the REIT’s latest acquisition is one that Jeffrey Fisher, chairman and CEO of Chatham, is intimately familiar with.
When the U.S. Bankruptcy Court approved the plan of reorganization for Innkeepers USA Trust on June 29, Chatham was in line to buy five hotels outright and a share of 64 more hotels in a joint venture with affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management LP. After completing these acquisitions, expected to close this month, the lodging REIT based in Palm Beach, Fla. will own interests in 83 hotels (19 wholly owned) after raising $150 million in an initial public offering in April 2010.
The 69 properties comprise Innkeepers’ former portfolio of mostly premium-branded extended-stay and select-service hotels, and all were part of the portfolio Fisher built after founding Innkeepers in 1994 with seven hotels. Apollo Investment Corp. bought the company that had grown to 74 hotels in 2007 for $1.5 billion.