Lodging & Real Estate

Question: Please describe the Lodging Real Estate Program at Fritz—what unique offerings does it have for students?

The lodging real estate program exposes students to the fundamental factors and issues that influence the operation and management, valuation, development, acquisition and disposition of hotel real estate. Students acquire the relevant technical skills and knowledge in valuing and developing hotels. The program consists of a set of three courses, beginning with asset management, followed by lodging valuation, and concluding with lodging development and feasibility studies. These courses provide students with a comprehensive set of unique skills and knowledge that they can bring with them to any lodging real estate firm after graduation.

I’ll also add that the lodging development and feasibility course will be bumped up to 4 credit hours instead of the current 2 credit hours. Starting in 2023, students will be able to earn a certificate in advanced hotel and tourism analytics upon successfully passing an exam in the lodging development and feasibility course.

The program offers students an opportunity to learn about the various aspects of the real estate and ownership side of hospitality properties. Most students tend to choose a path that focuses on the operations side of hospitality, but our class exposes them to other potential paths they can consider if they decide that operations is not for them.

Question: How can real estate contribute to a holistic understanding of the hospitality industry?

Hospitality is both an operating business and a real estate investment. If students think they may desire, either now or in the future, to be an owner of a hotel or restaurant, they would benefit greatly from taking the class.

A keen understanding of real estate is fundamental to the hospitality industry—not only hotel real estate, but also, more broadly mixeduse and related industry is the foundation for all hotels. One must understand what the “highest and best” value is for a piece of land to build on or an existing building to renovate to be able to know whether a hotel or a mixed-use project with a hotel makes the most sense. While hotels represent the most operating intensive segment of the traditional real estate industry (compared to office, industrial, retail, etc.) the real estate decisions can make or break whether a hotel is successful or not.

Question: What course(s) do you teach and how do they contribute to the lodging real estate program?

I teach two of the courses in the program, lodging valuation and lodging development and feasibility. The unique contribution of these courses allows students to apply what they learn to a realworld setting. Students apply the same set of skills and knowledge that are applied by many analysts working in hotel consulting and brokerage firms in the Denver area such as HVS, CBRE, HREC, etc. For example, in the valuation course, students are provided with an actual and recent hotel transaction without disclosure of the transaction price. Students are asked to create a

Broker’s Opinion of Value (BOV) to value the property using the sales comparison and income approaches in valuing a hotel.

The course I teach can best be described as Hotel Real Estate 101 from an owner’s perspective versus an operator’s perspective. The course brings in 10-12 alumni that are guest speakers in various aspects of the real estate side of hospitality and they talk about their current role in the real estate side, their career paths and how they got into the real estate side of the business. Nearly all alumni who speak in our class started out in operations and wish they had been given the opportunity to take a lodging real estate course as students.

Question: What kinds of careers can be found in the hospitality industry while focusing on real estate?

Students interested in this area usually start off as analysts with firms involved in lodging real estate acquisition, development and valuation. These firms include REITs, brokerage firms, consulting firms, asset management, developers and major hotel brands, among others. Most students usually spend about two to three years acquiring the skills and knowledge as analysts before being promoted to middle and senior management positions either with the same firm or a different firm.

Some careers are investment analyst, hotel development, hotel asset manager, hotel financing specialist for a bank or lending institution, hotel sales broker, hotel debt broker, hotel developer, hotel equity fund manager and many more.

There are so many great careers to be found in the hospitality industry while focusing on real estate, including being a developer (conceiving and bringing a hotel project to life either as a new build or renovation), an architect (designing the overall plan and components of the hotel), a designer (designing the interior components of the hotel), a general contractor (actually building the hotel), an owner of hotels, either on the investment side (buying and selling hotels) or on the asset management side (enhancing value of hotel through multiple avenues), or being a lender to hotel owners and developers.

Question: What would you say to a potential student who may be considering the Lodging Real Estate Program at Fritz?

I would say give it a try by taking the asset management course, in which the student will be exposed to all the different facets of lodging real estate through various guest speakers from the development, lending, legal, acquisition and brokerage sides of the business. The goal of that course is to get students interested in lodging real estate.

Take a lodging real estate class your junior year to learn about the possibilities and perhaps get an internship in the field. This can help you determine if the lodging real estate program is right for you.

Expose yourself to as many mentors, professors, fellow students, recent alums and classes as you can, both inside of real estate and in some other related disciplines. As mentioned above, there are so many different paths you can take on the lodging real estate side that the only way to know what you will like and be good at is to follow this approach as well as use different internship opportunities to see how those paths work and feel in the real world.

Question: How does Fritz prepare students to enter hospitality real estate?

We have a great advisory board composed of some top hospitality real estate professionals who provide valuable advice and guidance on what we should be teaching; the courses we offer are the result of that consultation. What also makes us different is being a small boutique program that offers student a personalized, guided experience from the time they enter the program to the time they leave. We are one of a handful of schools that have the expertise to provide hotel real estate courses. The result is we now have more students interested in real estate than ever before. Moreover, we’ve developed a reputation as being a top teaching school for lodging real estate and, as a result, real. estate firms often recruit our students for jobs post-graduation.