The commercial real estate market has been a tough one, so too is the business travel industry. For those who do a lot of travel and find themselves working on location, well, they realize what a great service that Extended Stay Motels are. And with their many locations around the country, they make a great asset to any company on the move, or executive caught between locations for extended periods or days on end. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the nice rooms, WiFi, desks, services, and ease of use. Indeed, the prices are good too.
Well, it appears that due to the tough economy Extended Stay got a little over extended in debt. With Bankruptcy options nearing crunch time it appears that the company will be sold to one of their competitors which hopes to expand into their market. Extended Stay has a good bit of market share, and it appears a multi-billion dollar deal is in the works, meaning someone will take over that debt, and roll into the economic expansion period and into the positive business cycle with one of the best brands in the business.
Apparently, CenterBridge, Paulson, Goldman, CitiGroup, and others will get this deal done. This adds 700 locations to the competitor who takes them over. This will be one of the largest commercial real estate deals in the hotel industry in quite a while. If the deal does get done, it makes sense to keep the brand name as it is well traveled by seasoned business folks who are busy making this world go around. Before retirement in the franchising industry, we made sure to stay at one of their locations whenever possible, it just made life easier when we were setting up new franchisees around the country.
We needed a temporary base of operations and we were able to use these facilities to launch our Bonzai and Blitz marketing missions to attract new clientele in the market for our new franchisee team members. Good security, good service, and all the things you need when you are at you office away from home. Best of all with their large parking lots and great locations, we could park our mobile command center in the parking lot only miles from all our potential new customers.
It’s good to see that Extended Stay is here to stay and they’ve extended their lease on life despite the bankruptcy. So, this is a deal to watch and one that will make a lot of traveling executives happy to see. Please consider all this.
