Karim Alibhai’s Gencom and White Bridge Capital partnered on a nine-figure acquisition of the InterContinental Miami high-rise hotel in downtown Miami, their third joint hotel deal in the past year.
The Miami-based firms bought the 34-story, 652-room waterfront hotel overlooking Biscayne Bay at 100 Chopin Plaza from the Chinese Dajia Insurance Group’s Strategic Hotels & Resorts, Bloomberg reported. A spokesperson for the buyers confirmed the sale but did not disclose the seller or sale price. The price was reported as $300 million by Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source.
The deal works out to $460,123 per key — 9 percent above the $422,000 average price per room for Florida full-service hotels, according to MSCI Real Capital Analytics.
The sellers recently completed a property-wide renovation that updated guest rooms with new furnishings, finishes and technology.
The IHG Hotels & Resorts-brand hotel has 22 suites ranging from 850 to 2,800 square feet, including its Presidential and Royal Suites, while standard rooms average 405 square feet. The renovation also included upgrades to the Club InterContinental Lounge, pool cabanas and SkyLawn outdoor event space.
The hotel’s food and beverage includes Toro Toro, the rooftop Bluewater, Ole, Starbucks and Freddy’s Speakeasy, a reservation-only, Prohibition-inspired cocktail bar.
Other amenities include 35 meeting rooms, more than 90,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor event space, a rooftop pool and private cabanas, full-service spa, fitness center and business center.
The deal marks Gencom’s second InterContinental-branded property, following its acquisition of the 607-room InterContinental New York Times Square in December with White Bridge, a real estate private investment and credit advisory firm primarily for Latin American family offices. In February, the companies acquired the 253-key Ritz-Carlton Central Park in Manhattan for $320 million.
With $8 billion in assets under management, Gencom’s Miami portfolio includes the 423-room oceanfront Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, which it co-developed in the late 1990s and recently renovated in a project costing more than $100 million.
In December, Gencom reacquired a majority stake in the 115-room Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, which it previously owned in 2011 before selling to Hersha Hospitality Management in 2017.
The company is partnering with Hyatt on Miami Riverbridge, a privately funded project valued at more than $1.5 billion to redevelop the Hyatt Regency Miami and James L. Knight Center site along the Miami River. Plans call for two hotels, 700 apartments, 200,000 square feet of meeting and event space, and 50,000 square feet of public green space.
Florida is outperforming the national hotel investment market, accounting for 22 percent of U.S. hotel sales volume in the latest four-quarter period as investors poured $7.2 billion into the Sunshine State’s hotel properties. The figures were presented by HVS Senior Managing Director John Lancet at the Kabani Group’s 10th annual Hotel Investment Forum on Thursday at the JW Marriott Marquis in downtown Miami, using data from MSCI Real Capital Analytics.
The strongest gains came in the full-service hotel segment, where Florida sales volume surged 193 percent to $5.1 billion, representing roughly 70 percent of the state’s total hotel transaction volume. The segment recorded 46 transactions involving 9,592 rooms, with an average price of $422,000 per room and an average capitalization rate of 7.3 percent.
Unlike the broader Florida market, where portfolio transactions contributed significantly to sales volume, full-service hotel sales were split relatively evenly between individual property and portfolio transactions, according to the presentation.
But even as deal activity picks up, hotel owners are facing pressure on operating margins from franchise fees and brand standards, higher labor, insurance, property tax and financing costs, panelists said at the forum.
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