HB On The Scene: It’s A New Ballgame As Lodging Conference ’03 Steps Up To Plate

PHOENIX— Both the theme and timing of this year’s Lodging Conference proved appropriate last night as a standing-room-only crowd of industry professionals gathered under the lights here at The Arizona Biltmore to usher in the ninth edition of this annual conclave. As if to underscore the baseball analogies in evidence throughout the conference and exhibit area, a substantial portion of the attendees at the opening-night cocktail reception were riveted to the action pitting the Chicago Cubs against the Florida Marlins, playing out on a big-screen television set up along the edge of the meeting’s outdoor reception area. Despite the ballgame serving as a backdrop, talk at the event made it readily apparent the pursuit of hotel-arena profitability was the true “national pastime” for those in attendance, as a wide array of brokers, lenders, owners, managers, vendors and advisory/consulting executives made it a point to touch base with their industry counterparts and customers. As such, the first “pitch” of this year’s meeting was delivered by Steven Belmonte and conference chairman Morris Lasky as they shared details of their newly announced business team, Belmonte & Lasky Asset Management. Set up in large part to go to bat for those who— in Lasky’s estimation— “find themselves owning hotels… but don’t really know how to own them,” the new venture sports a lineup of asset-management capabilities and services drawn from the principals’ extensive experience within the lodging sector. Building on their background of some 84 years of combined hotel expertise, Belmonte and Lasky seem intent to prove the adage: “a busy person will always find the time to get something [worthwhile]done.” Belmonte— former president/CEO of Ramada Franchise Systems— is concurrently active in his role as chairman/CEO of New Jersey-based Hospitality Solutions, while Lasky is retaining his responsibilities as CEO of Chicago-based Lodging Unlimited and a director of the International Hotel Conference. As both industry veterans explained to HOTEL BUSINESS®, part of the fallout from the trying economic conditions of the past two years has been the shifting of hotel ownership from struggling industry entrepreneurs to banks and other lenders. To this end, the new Belmonte/Lasky undertaking has been set up to help both sides of this equation— the portfolio managers whose organizations foreclosed on hotel loans gone bad, and who now find themselves saddled with a lodging facility and little idea of what to do with it, and the existing hotel owner battling to keep operational costs down and revenues up. Given this scenario, Belmonte and Lasky maintained they’re well-positioned to make the right call as the owners’ onsite eyes and ears, noting between them they’ve “probably been responsible for some $15 billion to $20 billion in lodging properties” during the course of their careers. Moreover, it appears that number is set to climb further, as Belmonte noted the new enterprise “already has a significant amount of business lined up,” with every expectation of even more to come.