supply/demand imbalances…

In many cases, imbalances between supply and demand resolve themselves relatively quickly.

–Fresh produce goes bad.

–Clothing wears out, or is lost or damaged–or fashions shift–constantly creating new demand.

–Workers retrain and change careers.

–Technological change makes production equipment, as well as their output, obsolete.

…are difficult with long-lived assets like real estate

But what happens with real estate?

…where structures can be very expensive, are typically funded with borrowed money, may take years to build, generally can’t be relocated and can last for fifty years or more.  They’re also relatively low tech.

In this post, fresh from my visit to Las Vegas, I’m going to write about what happens with hotels/motels, a special case of this real estate question.

motels

These are easier to analyze than hotels, since they cost less and can be built faster.  Often, they’re designed in modular fashion so they can add extra wings of rooms at relatively low expense, if needed.  They also tend, in the US at least, to draw most of their customers from people who have business within a few miles of the motel.

Therefore, new capacity comes in lower increments and is visible to potential new entrants faster than with hotels.  So overcapacity tends to be less severe.

cost pressure points

There are two big costs for a motel operator that I don’t think are readily apparent–the price of affiliation with a national chain, and the need for periodic refurbishment of rooms.  These expenses end up being the big factors in eliminating existing capacity.

Chain affiliation, which may cost 5% or more of revenues, brings two benefits:  a brand image and access to a reservation system to direct potential guests to the motel.

Although guests don’t think about it much, hotels and motels suffer a lot of wear and tear, both in the rooms themselves and in common areas.  So they require a considerable amount of spending on maintenance.  In addition, to keep the rooms new looking in a way that justifies a higher rate, rooms have to be refurbished periodically–say every five years.

The two expense items are interconnected, since maintaining a specified standard of appearance will also be a condition for retaining affiliation with a chain.

When profits are under pressure, in my experience the first area to suffer cutbacks will be maintenance/room refurbishment.  Once these expenditures begin being postponed, it becomes progressively more difficult to catch up, since returning to the former standard is increasingly more expensive.  At the same time, less favorable online user reviews translate into less repeat business.  This compounds the financial problem.

At some point, a motel may fall below the standards necessary to maintain its affiliation with, say, the Marriott chain.  It may, however, still qualify to be a Best Western or Comfort Inn affiliate.   So it “solves” its maintenance/refurbishment problem by switching affiliations.  The motel effectively removes capacity from a higher-price market segment and introduces new capacity to another, lower-price one.

For a given motel, this journey to less expensive market segments may have several steps.  At some point, the building may be sold for alternate use as, for example, a nursing home.  If so, the capacity disappears entirely.

hotels

The same principles apply.  Three differences, however:

–hotels need to achieve a certain amount of occupancy–generally thought of as 30%–regardless of profits, so the building will feel “alive” and safe

–hotels are much larger in scale

–there are no alternate uses.

In Las Vegas, scene of immense overcapacity currently, two additional patterns are evident:

–older and new, but not as conveniently located, properties had been competing on lower price.  Given the new hotels’ need to generate occupancy to create a favorable ambiance, that advantage is diminished.  WYNN, for instance, had been planning to charge $300+/night for its new rooms.  But average room rates are currently around $200, with mid-week rates considerably below that.

–in the case of WYNN, LVS and to a lesser extent MGM,  management fees from Asian operations to the US are supplementing US cash flows, thereby enhancing the location advantage the three have.

signs of strain

You can already see signs of strain–and of capacity leaving the premium segment of the market.  The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, for example, that Hilton is planning to end its affiliation with the Las Vegas hotel owned by private equity investor Colony Capital.

And MGM is also hoping to be able to blow up its as yet unopened Harmon hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.