Advertise on podcast: The Hotel Investor Playbook

Sarah Dusek had built Under Canvas when a private equity buyer took a majority stake at a valuation north of $100 million. Michael Russell opens the episode by asking what they were actually buying. Her answer is two words: embedded EBITDA. In this episode, Sarah explains how Under Canvas came to own both the real estate and the operating company as a single business with almost no bricks and mortar, and why that structure is unusual in hospitality. Michael presses her on whether glamping is destined to commoditize, given how little it takes to put tents on a field, and she argues the barrier to entry is lower than a comparable hotel while the operating complexity is about a hundred times harder. He also gets her to break down the economics of the conservation lodge business she runs at Few and Far, where a single project runs $20 million to $50 million, and she says she is underwriting to a 20 percent cash-on-cash target. There is also the night a thunderstorm flattened her camp in Yellowstone while she was living on site with two small children, and what her team managed to do before eleven o'clock that same evening. She is candid about the credit card debt and the bankruptcy she was staring down at the time, and she gives a straight tactical answer on what to do on the days you want to quit. If you are trying to build something in hospitality that does not have a comp yet, and you want to hear what that actually costs, this is that conversation. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Bruce and Emily Haupt run The Landgrove, a 16-room inn with a full-service restaurant and a 1,500-square-foot art barn, in a Vermont town of 180 people. They paid $1.8 million for it, and the down payment did not come out of savings. It came out of Emily's 401(k), rolled into the business through a provision in the tax code called ROBS, Rollover for Business Startups, which let them put $450,000 of retirement money to work without paying an early withdrawal penalty. The catch is that she had to quit a 16-year career at Shell before the money could move at all. In this episode, Michael Russell walks through the capital stack piece by piece, all four layers of it: bank financing, development authority financing, the ROBS rollover, and a seller note. They get into what ROBS actually costs to set up and maintain, why it forces you into a C corporation, and why most of their business is owned by the 401(k) rather than by the two of them. They also cover what the spreadsheet missed, including a renovation Bruce says ran about four times what they planned for, and a staffing constraint that has both the Haupts and Michael housing their own employees. If you have retirement money sitting in the market and a hospitality deal you cannot work out how to fund, this one is worth your time. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Adam Walz and Micah Thomas are the co-founders of Comeback Hospitality, and they are roughly 30 days from opening The Wesley, a 1960s roadside motel in Page, Arizona they are converting into a 50-room boutique hotel. To buy it, they called 62 banks and got 61 no's. The 62nd said yes. As Micah puts it, financing a negative cash-flowing, unflagged hotel in a tertiary market is not something most lenders want anything to do with. In this episode, Michael Russell walks them through how the deal actually came together. A property listed at $6 million stepped down to $3.3 million all cash, putting them in at roughly $67,000 a key against a market average Micah puts at $115,000. The capital stack: $4.7 million financed against about $6.7 million all in, $1.65 million raised from investors, $250,000 of their own money, roughly 80% loan-to-cost, and why they took the SBA 7(a) over the cheaper 504. They also get into what went sideways, including a $10,000 WiFi upgrade that became $50,000 before another $30,000 on top, and the largest investor walking away at the eleventh hour of a 90-day raise. Micah also talks openly about living in room seven for the better half of six months while construction happened around him, and gives a straight answer on whether he would do it again. If you are underwriting your first commercial hospitality deal and you want to hear what the spreadsheet does not tell you, from two people who are still in the middle of it, this is that conversation. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Dustin Baker runs Hidden Gem Media, a performance marketing agency built to pull hospitality brands off the OTAs and onto direct bookings. By his account, one client resort went from roughly thirty thousand dollars a month in direct bookings to somewhere between two and three hundred thousand. His explanation for that jump has almost nothing to do with follower count. In this episode, Michael Russell and Dustin work through the difference between search traffic and discovery traffic, and why a business built on OTA and Google demand runs into a hard ceiling it cannot spend its way past. Dustin lays out the economics: what an effective commission actually includes once you add agency fees, ad spend, and any offer layered on top, and how that number compares to the 15 to 20 percent an OTA takes. He gives real thresholds: roughly five thousand a month in ad budget against fifty thousand in monthly room revenue, and ten thousand against a hundred thousand, and he is direct about the properties this does not work for. Michael's own hostel is one of them, and Dustin explains on air why he turned that business down. They also get into why calendar availability, not audience size, is what eventually drives ad costs up, why Dustin would hand an influencer's budget to Meta ten times out of ten, and why he would steer most owners away from crowdfunding a resort through pre-sold stay packages. If you are running an experiential property and you have been meaning to get serious about direct bookings, this one gives you numbers to work from. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Carly Whitney is a Senior Vice President at Business Finance Capital, a certified development company, and in thirteen years there she has been across more than a thousand SBA transactions. By her own count, that adds up to roughly four billion dollars in sales and refinances, with just over a billion of it in SBA dollars. Her answer to how much a hotel buyer actually has to bring to the table is fifteen percent. In this episode, Michael Russell and Carly break down the SBA 504 program from the ground up. Why a hotel counts as a special purpose property and shifts the standard 50-40-10 structure to 50-35-15. How one loan can cover the purchase and the property improvement plan together, financing up to 85% of total project cost. What the long-term fixed rate looked like at the time of recording, how the 504's ten-year prepayment penalty stacks up against the 7A's three-year, and where the 51% owner-occupancy rule actually bites. They also get into the 20% ownership threshold that triggers a personal guarantee and what that means for anyone raising capital, the $5 million SBA cap and how green improvements stack around it, the new citizenship rule that can disqualify an owner holding as little as 1%, and why a seller's tax returns are the hardest document to pry loose on a hotel deal. If you are looking at your first hotel and the down payment is the thing standing in the way, this is the financing conversation to start with. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

A 33-key Art Deco hotel in Miami sat on the market for five years. Forty brokers tried to sell it and failed. Amiti Bhow, Vice President at NewGen Advisory, finally got it done, not because she found a higher price, but because she found a buyer with certainty and clean terms. In this episode, Michael Russell talks with Bhow about what actually closed the Marlin, a hotel with a recording history that includes Beyoncé, Pharrell, and Bob Marley, and why the ownership group she calls "hobbyists, not hoteliers" left real money on the table in OTA spend and revenue management. They get into the barbell shape of today's hotel market, where capital is chasing ultra-boutique experiences on one end and practical extended stay on the other, and what that leaves for hotels stuck in the middle. Bhow also walks through adaptive reuse, converting aging hotels into student housing, behavioral health facilities, or senior care as the baby boomer generation retires, and the underwriting checklist she uses beyond the spreadsheet: demand generators, incoming supply within a two-mile radius, and PIP cycles. If you're evaluating a hotel deal, or wondering whether your property fits where the market is heading, this episode lays out the intangibles that actually separate a deal that closes from one that sits for five years. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Alexander Cartwright is a PhD economist who left a tenured professorship to buy distressed hotels and convert them into workforce housing through his company, HotelSHIFT. His business rests on a simple valuation gap: hotels trade at higher cap rates than apartments because their income is considered less durable, so the same building can be worth dramatically more once it's rezoned and leased as multifamily instead of run as a hotel. If you're looking for a corner of hospitality investing with less competition than traditional multifamily, and want to understand the zoning, financing, and tax mechanics behind turning a hotel into housing, this episode lays out the real playbook.   If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Dan Daly runs a fund that invests in boutique hotels across Europe, and on this episode he makes the case for why, in his view, Portugal beats the US on nearly every number that matters. According to Dan, property there has appreciated roughly 18% year over year versus 1.8% in the US, and a 30-year mortgage runs about 3.5% against 6.5-7% here. That gap, plus a much lower cost per square foot, is why his fund stopped looking at US deals altogether. Instead of buying property, Global Investment Partnership invests in the operating companies that run boutique hotels in Portugal, hotels that are already refurbished, licensed, and cash-flowing but undermanaged. Dan walks through the specific leaks he looks for (unclaimed cleaning fees alone can run $25-35 a night per unit) and the five-year path the fund creates to permanent EU residency for investors and their families. We also get into managing a portfolio spread across the US, Portugal, Madeira, and Andorra from a laptop in Los Angeles, and where Dan sees his exit. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Neil Dipaola bought five wrecked Airstreams off Craigslist in 2012 to use as affordable housing in a Santa Barbara mobile home park. Today those trailers have grown into AutoCamp, a nine-property outdoor hospitality brand backed by Airstream, partnered with Hilton, and targeting 100 properties and 10,000 rooms within a decade. In this episode, Neil explains how AutoCamp raised close to $300 million to build out its real estate portfolio, why he structured the business as three separate companies (real estate, brand, and operations) instead of one, and how that decision now gives him multiple ways to grow or eventually sell the brand. We also get into how the Hilton partnership actually works, why the AutoCamp team rejects the word "glamping," and how everyday investors can now buy equity in the brand for as little as $1,000. If you're building a hospitality brand and thinking about how to structure it for growth or an eventual exit, this is the playbook. Exclusive Listener Offer: Save 20% at all AutoCamp locations when you book through the link below: AutoCamp | Nature's Boutique Hotel If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Chris Kilcullen has spent three decades in hotels, closing more than $500 million in deals as a senior broker at Avison Young. He's also sold franchises, brokered acquisitions for a REIT, and now built his own hotel concept, so he's seen the flag question from every angle. In this episode, he and Michael dig into the real math: why a commodity economy hotel can lose 30 to 40 percent of its value the moment it drops its brand, and why a well-positioned independent or boutique property can out-earn a branded one because it isn't capped by what guests expect to pay for a templated room. They also cover how Hilton and Marriott are using new soft brands to pull independent hotels back into their loyalty ecosystems, the F&B concept Chris is building to fix the one thing every guest complains about, and why some aging economy hotels are worth more converted into workforce housing than they are as hotels. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

He's not a hotel investor. He built his career in multifamily and self-storage, growing a portfolio that peaked near $1 billion across more than 4,000 units. But the way he underwrites deals, ranks markets, and raises capital works across every asset class, hotels included. That's exactly why he's on this show. Data beats gut feel by a million miles. That's his rule, and in this episode, he breaks down the two metrics he checks before touching any deal, the same ones that predict a hotel's performance as reliably as an apartment complex's. In this episode, you'll discover: The two metrics, jobs and supply, that predict a market's future better than population or income growthWhy one new hotel within a mile of yours can cut your ADR by $10 to $20 a nightHow he renegotiated a construction loan mid-build to save $3.5 million a year when rates nearly doubledThe two U.S. markets he's bullish on right now, including one riding Big Tech's race for nuclear powerHow he runs a 30-person AI workforce off a $100 mini PC and $250 a monthIf you're underwriting your next deal on comps and a hunch, this conversation will show you what data-driven investors track instead. The ADR stat still lands, it's just doing its job in the bullets instead of the opener, so nothing was lost by cutting that paragraph. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Most hotel investors build the product first and spend years chasing an audience to fill it. This guest flipped the order entirely. In this episode, Michael Russell sits down with a travel content creator who built a following of over a million people, then used years of staying in the world's best hotels to figure out exactly what makes a property worth sharing, and designed his own around it. That audience helped his first Bali hotel hit 80% occupancy in month one and pay back its full construction cost in 18 months, entirely self-funded. He now runs a 250-person company raising capital directly from that same audience to build boutique hotels across Bali and South Africa. In this episode, you'll discover: How building an audience before building the asset flips the usual risk profile on a hotel investmentWhat years of documenting five-star hotels taught him about what actually drives bookingsWhy he skipped OTAs almost entirely, and what that did to margins that run 40 to 60%How he's using fractional ownership to raise capital from his own community instead of institutional moneyWhat it took to scale from one Bali boutique hotel to hotels on two continentsThe one red flag he says every investor should check before wiring money into any hospitality fundIf you think an audience is just for influencers chasing likes, this episode will show you how far it can go as a substitute for a marketing budget, and where the real risk still lives. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Jake Snow: Website is ventore.com Their latest project is polarity.ventore.com  Instagram: @ventoregroup and @mariefeandjakesnow Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

Most people walk past the ugly deal. That's exactly why the ugly deal is where the money is. In this episode, Michael Russell sits in the hot seat as a guest on the Lights On Podcast, sharing the unfiltered story behind how he acquired a rundown one-star motel in Maui during COVID and repositioned it into the number one small hostel in North America, growing annual revenue from $500K to $2.4 million in just a few years. Co-founder of Howzit Hostels and Malama Capital, Michael has built a hospitality portfolio by finding value where others aren't looking, starting with single-family homes in the post-recession market, scaling through short-term rentals, and eventually buying a motel no one else wanted. In this episode, you'll discover: Why Michael paid $800K for a property most investors would have ignored, and how seller financing made it possibleThe budgeting mistake that nearly destroyed their returns (and why going 40-50% over budget is more common than anyone admits)How the Lahaina fires wiped out short-term rental income overnight and what it taught him about cash reserves the hard wayThe real math on OTAs vs. direct bookings that most independent operators get wrongWhy Michael started The Hotel Investor Playbook with zero interest in monetizing it, and what that means for the conversations he's willing to haveIf you're serious about finding your first hotel deal or scaling what you've already built, this episode will save you from some expensive assumptions. The unglamorous path is usually the most profitable one. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

In this episode, you'll learn how to diagnose whether your property is actually a candidate for wellness positioning, and if it is, how to implement it in a way that lifts ADR without blowing out your expense line. A hospitality strategist who spent 20 years in hotel sales and development before building a consulting practice around wellness revenue joins us to share the playbook she's used across independent properties worldwide. Emily Johnson's approach has helped properties drive occupancy lifts and ADR increases with near-zero incremental cost by tapping into what they already have. In this episode, you'll discover: The 3 questions every owner should ask before spending a dollar on wellnessWhy a Thailand beachfront property was getting crushed on rate until one strategy drove a 15% occupancy lift and $40 ADR increase in a single quarterThe low-cost local partnership model that turns empty meeting rooms into revenueWhy most "wellness hotels" are faking it and how guests always find outThe pre-arrival touchpoint that nearly every hotel is missing is costing real revenueHow a mountain property with no unique story repositioned around one experiential amenity and sold out glass-ceiling cabins at $1,000 a nightIf you're an independent operator trying to compete without throwing capital at the problem, this episode will show you where to start. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Emily Johnson Website: https://www.elevatehospitalitycollective.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilygoretskyjohnson/  Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal

It took zero dollars of his own money to buy a $4.5 million waterfront resort. It took three years and over a million and a half dollars out of pocket just to keep it. In this episode, you'll discover the deal, debt, equity sequence he says has never failed to raise capital on a good deal, and exactly when a joint venture beats a syndication. A multifamily investor who scaled to over 600 rental units, and once raised $10 million without a following or a dollar from family, walks through the one hospitality deal that broke all his usual rules. Christian Osgood unpacks exactly where his due diligence missed the mark, and the strategy he used to turn a struggling resort into a self-sustaining cash machine. In this episode, you'll discover: Spot the hidden payroll problem that makes a mom-and-pop hotel's books lie to youAvoid the seller-financing structure that can wipe out a full year of cash flow in one paymentTurn dead event space into guaranteed income through master leasing, fixed checks every month, with zero staffing or cleanupCombine a $1,000 a month ad budget with free community events to drive a 43% profit jump in twelve monthsApply the deal, debt, equity framework before you ever start looking for investorsDecide when a joint venture beats a syndication so you can skip the legal headachesIf you're underwriting a boutique hotel or resort deal, this conversation could save you from learning these lessons the expensive way. If you found value in this episode, take 30 seconds to leave us a review. Tap into the show, scroll down to Ratings & Reviews, and drop a quick review. It helps more people find the podcast and keeps us bringing on great guests. Connect with Christian Osgood Website: https://multifamilystrategy.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Multifamilystrategy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-osgood-10a95b71 Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn. Email Us at [email protected] Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram Invest with Malama Capital Submit a deal