Jonathan Stanner, president and CEO of Summit Hotel Properties, Inc. (NYSE: INN), participated in a video interview during Nareit’s REITworld: 2023 Annual Conference held Nov. 14-16 in Los Angeles.
Stanner said Summit sees a lot of organic growth left in its portfolio, with 50% of the REIT’s assets in urban markets.
“Urban markets have been slower to recover, but they have been the source of the majority of our growth over the last six to nine months,” he said. “We think they’re poised to continue to benefit from some of the normalization of demand trends that we’ve seen.”
Stanner added that Summit has a number of hotels that are currently coming out of renovations, and he expects to see business at those locations ramp up fairly quickly.
Looking ahead to his main priorities for Summit in 2024, Stanner said the REIT would like to continue the positive momentum it’s seen recently in growing its hotel level EBITDA.
“We have been really proud of the job the team has done continuing to drive profitability at the hotel level, despite the fact that we’ve been in a decelerating RevPAR growth environment,” he said.
Stanner noted that with more than $400 million of liquidity, Summit’s balance sheet is in good shape: “We do have a balance sheet that’s well-positioned for this kind of higher-for-longer interest rate environment.”