Dennis Craven, EVP and COO of Chatham Lodging Trust (NYSE: CLDT), participated in a video interview in conjunction with Nareit’s REITweek: 2022 Investor Conference in New York on June 7-9.
Craven said that Chatham Lodging Trust has sold five of its older hotels since the beginning of the pandemic for approximately $150 million, and reinvested $175 million in newer assets.
“[These new assets are] in markets that we like better, quite honestly, with higher growth profiles,” he said. “We think overall it’s an accretive transaction for our shareholders [and] for us.”
Craven said that the world has been driven by leisure travel for the past 21 months, and that some of the REIT’s peers have seen a “tremendous benefit” from that, but that will likely begin to level off as travel choices increase.
“Our portfolio is primarily business-driven, so we’ve used the last two years to really refine our structure and even perform better,” he said.
Craven added that Chatham Lodging Trust has five hotels that are “highly tech-driven” and while they’ve seen limited demand over the past two-plus years, occupancy is picking up as business travel has begun to return during the summer of 2022.