Operational Oversight + Financial Monitoring:
- Review Monthly Profit & Loss Statements, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow.
- Ensure that hotels are driving profitability and identify areas for improvement, bringing issues to the attention of the appropriate individuals.
- Review and benchmark revenues and key metrics against budget, prior year and history of the hotel. Identify any trends or opportunities that would result in increasing revenues and operating performance of the property by the management company.
- Ensure a full understanding of all revenue channels (segmentation, book direct, OTA's, cancellation fees, destination fees, catering, outlets, room rental, service charges, etc.) and provide recommendations for improvements of each.
- Review operating expenses, the operating structure and peer hotels for benchmarking of operating performance. Bring opportunities or issues to the attention of the management company.
- Review Weekly and monthly STR reports, identifying trends and areas of opportunity and bringing to the attention of the Management Company.
- Review sales pace reports, marketing plans and revenue strategies on a consistent basis to identify areas of opportunity or concern.
- Review and approve any contracts in which terms are greater than 12 months and require a spend of over $5,000/yr.
- Review contracts with the Management company from time to time and identify areas where hotels can reduce operating expenses and use the power of the portfolio to achieve expense savings and incentives.
- Review property organization chart and operating structure including payroll and payroll related expenses to ensure efficient operation and to make recommendations of the Management Company.
Ancillary Revenue Opportunities:
- Review all revenue sources and provide recommendations on opportunities to add revenue channels, to include destination fees, parking fees, outlet concepts, airport parking, antennas, space leases, upsells, packages, room rentals, audio visual, pet fees, cancellation fees, outside room rentals, etc.
Partnership & Operating Agreements:
- Ensure compliance with key partnership and operating agreements governing the assets.
Franchise Agreement:
- Ensure monitoring and compliance of franchise agreements to include staying up to date on brand initiatives, requirements, operating covenants, renovation timelines, fee structure, term, PIP's, etc.
- Communicate with key players within the Franchisor organization to provide updates on the property.
Management Agreement:
- Ensure monitoring and compliance of management agreements to include ensuring management fees are appropriately charged, group services are appropriately charged, management company is billing appropriate pass-throughs, budget requirements, term, etc.
Guest Score/Guest Feedback:
- Monitor guest scores from the brands as well as review sites like TripAdvisor, Google, OTA's. Identify trends relating to the guest experience and work with Management Company to address issues, be it service or capital items.
Key Leadership:
- Interview key hotel leadership, primarily general managers when there are vacancies.
- Monitor key leadership positions for vacancies, terminations and filling/hiring of those positions.
Tenants:
- Actively review tenant rent rolls for all properties, ensuring that rents are paid current, adjustments to rent and/or cam are made, tenants are being communicated with and expirations of term are being watched/addressed in advance.
Ground Leases & Common Area Obligations:
- Abstract and have an understanding of ground leases governing the underlying assets.
- Ensure compliance with ground lease terms, extensions/notices, payments, re-set dates, reporting requirements and notice requirements.
- Review all easements, parking agreements, common area maintenance agreements governing the underlying assets to have an understanding of responsibilities for both the property operations team as well as monitoring for payment/billing accuracy.
Market:
- Review market data and monitor supply for any developments, renovations, re-flagging, etc. In cases where the Hotel will be competitive and there is a basis to contest, asset management should discuss and pursue.
Accounting:
- Review Accounts Receivable on a monthly basis.
- Review Accounts Payable on a monthly basis.
- Ensure that properties are funding all reserve accounts as needed, including Taxes, FF&E, Insurance and Seasonality.
- Ensure that the funds for any advance deposit liabilities are accounted for in a separate reserve account.
- Ensure that TPG fees are kept current, including Risk, Management and Other amounts owed.
- Ensure that accounting is aware of real estate and personal property tax bills and that they are paid on time.
- Work with auditors on ad-hoc requests to satisfy any and all requirements.
Investor Reporting:
- Ensure that all investor information is properly posted to the investor portal, this includes pertinent documents following an acquisition as well as monthly reporting of financials, manager critiques, sales pace reports, STR reports, construction reports and Capex reports.
- Communicate with investment partners periodically regarding each of their investments (monthly, or as is necessary or reasonably requested of investment partner).
- Ensure that the investor portal is operating as intended, that the correct investors have access to the correct information.
- Respond to any ad-hoc questions of the investment partners.
Capital Improvements:
- Review and approve of annual and forward-looking capital plans.
- Review and approve of various capital requests throughout the year for all amounts exceeding $2,500.
Property Visits:
- Ensure that hotels are visited on a consistent basis giving additional frequency of visit requirements to performance and/or issues (ie. exception based). Provide senior management planned property trip schedule at the beginning of each year and at mid-year
- AMs to communicate each trip ahead of time with the Regional Ops and Sales teams
- While on-site, AMs to review condition of the asset, cleanliness of the asset, leadership, guest scores, performance against the comp set, and other property-level changes that should be made to ensure efficient operations and performance (see attached checklist). AMs to sit down and speak with the GM, DOS, and other management positions at the property
- AMs to deliver a PowerPoint presentation trip report, outlining 4-5 key takeaways as well as photos and notes on immediate action items for both Operations and Property teams. AMs to ensure that trip reports are provided from each property visit within 7 days of the visit.
Re-Financings:
- Assist in engagement of debt placement broker, reviewing the agreement, terms, etc.
- Work with debt placement broker to put together financial offering memorandum.
- Communicate key terms of debt that we are looking for and ensure proper guidance when going to market.
- Coordinate weekly meetings to push along the process, assisting in ad-hoc requests, providing diligence information.
- Review and track financing proceeds and sources and uses, setting expectations for stakeholders. Ensure proper review of payoff requirements and notification of lender in accordance with loan docs.
- Review closing statement to ensure cost mitigation and proceed maximization.
- Actively engage third parties to ensure process moves along smoothly.
- Review term sheets received from various lenders and make recommendation to senior management.
- Coordinate the re-financing process with third parties, lender, broker, legal to execute successful re-financing.
Annual Budgeted Distributions:
- Work with fund accounting to take the budgets and parlay them into a cash flow distribution forecast. The asset management team will understand all of the cash commitments, property needs, payables and cash position to realistically forecast distributions to the partners.
Operating Budget Process:
- Provide real estate and personal property tax and debt service guidance to the accounting department for budget purposes.
- Review and provide feedback on all budgets to the Operations team, following review of revenues, expenses, sales and marketing plans, etc. Provide active role in budgeting process and strategic plans and continue to be involved in process through to the finalization and approval of the operating budgets.
- Ensure that budgets are distributed to lenders, investors and stakeholders requiring budgets.
Capital Budget Process:
- Provide template to operations team of capital budgets.
- Review capital budgets and plan for various projects with consideration to fund availability, return on investment and priority for hotel.
Monthly Distributions:
- Review distribution worksheets in advance of monthly distribution meetings in an effort to provide active involvement and guidance to hotel accounting and fund accounting to determine cash strategy as it relates to distributions and uses of property and fund level cash.
Acquisition Transition:
- Once the acquisitions team is "hard" on a transaction, debrief with the Acquisitions team to understand the investment thesis and all pertinent facts associated with the deal.
- Coordinate with Fund Accounting on Fund Raise and Sources & Uses.
- Circulate a full acquisition re-cap both internally and to key investment partners in connection with past practices (examples available upon request).
- Ensure Management Company is handling on boarding, understand organizational structure and operational strategy and execution of expense management, revenue management and sales/marketing planning.
Construction/Design:
- Review construction budget and ensure expectations are set upon acquisition or renovation planning.
- Provide guidance to construction team on scope, pricing, additional items that may be needed.
- Work with Construction to select a designer for the project.
- Review and be part of the process of the design during the project.
- Ensure schedules are delivered and followed.
- Ensure monthly reporting to investors is adhered to, including review of the report in advance of distribution.
- Monitor buyout report, key contracts and overall spend of the project to ensure that it remains in line with expectations.
- Ensure that the sources and uses are properly communicated and that we have the funding to complete the project, working with the Lender to ensure funds are received in a timely manner.
- Periodic visits to the property to ensure that the project is going according to plan, be it quality of construction and materials, communication with operations team, displacement mitigation and that the property is proceeding according to schedule.
Insurance:
- Ensure hotel has adequate insurance in place, premiums are paid, and hotels are meeting any requirements of lenders or other parties. Review opportunities to reduce premium costs that might be outside of the purview of the TPG Master Policy, including flood premiums, earthquake premiums, auto premiums, etc. Review against historical and benchmark insurance premium costs periodically.
- Work with TPG's Risk Management team and Management Company to mitigate damage from any losses and to address property repairs following losses while working with broker/carrier to ensure that funds for the claim acceptable and are received in a timely manner to handle the repairs.
- Work with and advise investors, lenders and (where applicable) franchisors of property on business interruption claims. Ensure timely receipt of checks/proceeds.
Third Parties:
- Work with outside tax consultant (DMA) to actively monitor real estate tax appeals, personal property tax filings and to project taxes for cash planning and budget planning. Ensure tax summaries are updated as new information is made available and that the repository for tax bills is maintained.
- Work with outside gas and electric energy advisor (Tradition) to actively monitor contracts, usage, budgeting as well as coordinating contracts with legal.
Loan Monitoring/Lenders:
- Ensure that all properties have a full debt abstract and that they are up to date.
- Monitor interest rates, hedging opportunities, interest rate risk.
- Review lender held reserves to ensure that they are accurate, that the hotel is funding accordingly. In the case of excess reserves, ensure that they are being refunded to the property.
- Work with Capex team to properly request and process FF&E Reserve disbursements.
- Ensure that loan maturities and extension requirements are tracked and addressed accordingly.
- Conduct periodic review of mortgage statements to ensure that they are accurate relative to the loan agreement.
- In CMBS loans that are cash managed, ensure that cash management budgets (with sales/use an occupancy taxes) are provided on a timely basis with the lender; Ensure that operating expenses are being released to the Borrower and that cash is being managed in accordance with loan documents.
- Ensure that all reporting requirements are being adhered to including compliance certificates, guarantor and monthly borrower financials, audited financials, tax returns, etc.
- Respond to ad-hoc requests from lenders and keep lender up to speed on major milestones or key events at the property.
Dispositions:
- Monitor asset and recommend investment strategy during the life of the investment and recommend disposition of the asset to the EC with rationale. This strategy should give consideration to in-place financing and ability to take out the existing loan, the initial hold term, the fund term, investment returns, capital needs.
- Secure sales broker to assist with selling hotel, ensuring competitive fee structure.
- Provide all diligence materials to selling broker.
- Work with selling broker to put together and approve the offering memorandum.
- Order third parties to speed process along, including PIP's (where applicable).
- Ensure that all key agreements are in place and pre
