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Practice/Industry Group Overview
Hospitality and Resort Practice
Hunton & Williams LLP has long had an active national practice in the hospitality industry. Clients include real estate investment trusts focused on the hotel industry, international hotel companies, hotel management companies, hotel and resort owners and companies providing goods and services to the hotel industry.
Our national REIT practice has a particular focus on hotel REITs. Hunton & Williams pioneered the resurgence in the lodging industry's use of the REIT structure in the early 1990s and has served as counsel on substantially more hotel REIT transactions than any other firm. We are thoroughly familiar with the numerous complex tax and corporate law issues inherent in the hotel REIT structure.
Representative hospitality industry capital markets transactions include:
- Issuer's counsel for 11 hotel company IPOs.
- Negotiating hundreds of hotel management agreements with national and local management companies.
- Underwriters' counsel for four hotel company IPOs.
- Counsel on dozens of public and private debt and equity financing transactions for hotel companies aggregating billions of dollars.
- Representation of hotel industry clients in M&A transactions or other strategic transactions with major hotel companies such as Hilton Hotels Corporation, MeriStar Hotels & Resorts, Interstate Hotels & Resorts, Doubletree Corporation, Promus Hotel Corporation, Marriott International, Inc., Wyndham International and CNL Hospitality Properties, Inc.
In addition to hotel owners, we also have represented major investment banking firms, such as Citigroup and Lehman Brothers in hospitality industry financing transactions.
In recent years, we have completed billions of dollars of acquisitions and financings for hospitality industry clients.
We have longstanding relationships with well known resort hotel properties such as:
- The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia;
- The Homestead, Hot Springs, Virginia;
- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (including its hotel division), Williamsburg, Virginia;
- The Jefferson Hotel, Richmond, Virginia; and
- The Tides Inn, Irvington, Virginia.
We also have represented the Resort Owners Association.
Our work for hospitality industry clients includes:
- public and private offerings of debt and equity securities;
- structured financings such as securitized mortgage financings;
- joint ventures;
- corporate level merger and acquisition transactions;
- hotel acquisitions and dispositions;
- hotel development;
- franchise related matters;
- labor and employment matters;
- intellectual property matters;
- timeshare/fractional ownership;
- litigation;
- property tax appeals;
- licensing matters; and
- zoning and land use.
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