Global Hospitality Group®

The hospitality attorneys in the Global Hospitality Group® of Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP comprise the premier hospitality practice in a full-service law firm, and the most experienced legal and advisory team in the industry. Our team of seasoned hotel lawyers has helped clients with more than 4,700 hospitality properties located around the globe valued at more than $125 billion, providing one of the most extensive virtual data bases of market terms for deals and financings. For more information about the Global Hospitality Group® and our current views on industry issues, visit www.HotelLawyer.com.

The hospitality lawyers of our team are not just great hotel lawyers—we are also hospitality consultants and business advisors, dealmakers and facilitators of the flow of capital. We help our clients find the right operator, joint venture partner or capital provider. We know who to call and how to reach them.

We advise on what are “market” terms and how to reach or exceed them. We help define key business goals, assemble the right team, develop strategies to optimize value and then get the deal done.

Our lodging and hospitality lawyers represent hotel owners, developers and lenders. Our clients rely on us for:

• Assembling the right team. Because our hotel lawyers know and have worked with all the major players in the industry, if there is a hole in your team, we can help you fill it
• Getting the right hotel operator. We don't just review hotel management agreements, we help you get the right operator and the optimal terms. We lead you through an interactive process that identifies the best possible operators for the property, sell the strongest attributes of your project, connect with the pivotal people at management companies, and guide the process of negotiating optimal terms to secure a fair management agreement
• Connecting with the right brand. Branded management is not for everyone. When you want to self manage or hire independent operators, we can help you determine an optimal brand for your property and negotiate the right terms
• Taking care of management agreements. Building on the practical experience gained from more than 2,700 management contracts, we will help you negotiate, renegotiate, litigate, arbitrate—or terminate hotel management agreements
• Crafting relevant solutions and creating value in development, acquisition and sale agreements. Our $123 billion of experience means that we have seen just about everything, and we likely have a rich choice of options to solve your problem. We know the market and market terms
• Providing access to hotel finance. For more than 25 years, our hospitality attorneys have produced a major annual hotel finance conference called “Meet the Money®,” which sustains and enhances the role of the Global Hospitality Group® as a gateway to hotel finance for our clients
• Developing complex joint venture and entity structures. Because we have represented both the providers of capital to joint ventures and the operating partner, we know the players and their expectations. We are often on the leading edge of defining market terms, and consult with clients on what these terms mean in the context of their business goals and opportunities
• Helping clients effectively manage their workforce. Labor is one of the largest controllable expenses at most hotels and resorts. We know the players at UNITE-HERE and SEIU union locals and how they often trip up and when they bluster. We know the troubled spots in the hotel environment for labor and employment issues

Our strengths include labor-management relations such as union prevention, collective bargaining for single, as well as multi-employer bargaining units, neutrality agreements, advising on union corporate campaigns and defense of unfair labor practice charges before the NLRB. We implement preventive management strategies, such as executive training, arbitration enforcement and policies and procedures. And we defend administrative and litigation claims, such as employee claims of sexual harassment and discrimination.

Our hotel lawyers know the hospitality business from every angle, and we provide our clients with creative options and practical solutions, for individual properties to billion-dollar portfolios that involve:

• Hotels
• Resorts
• Condo hotels and hotel condos
• Hotel-enhanced mixed-use
• Restaurants, spas and other amenities
• Golf, tennis and entertainment-related facilities
• Fractionals and timeshares
• Hotel workouts, receiverships and bankruptcies

The Global Hospitality Group® is also brought in on signature stadiums and arenas, as well as on assisted living facilities.

Whether your property is in London or Las Vegas, Bali or Dubai, Mexico City or Shanghai, you want the world’s best players on your team. We are the right hotel legal and consulting advisors for your project, and we can help you fill any other gaps on your team to create optimal value and results.

Today, documents zip across the street or around the world at the speed of light ... and online negotiations are supplemented by occasional face-to-face meetings for critical aspects of the deal. We may work with a lender from Germany or Japan, a management company from the U.S. or Hong Kong and a hotel portfolio located anywhere in the world.

Our experience and knowledge of your specific requirements and vision—regardless of location—make the difference.

JMBM’s hospitality lawyers have a virtual database of the critical market terms in hotel management agreements gained in representing clients in more than 2,700 hotel management agreements. This information makes it possible for you to get a fair deal and avoid potential embarrassments and costly missteps when negotiating important deal points. We have the latest technology on such important terms as meaningful:

• Performance clauses
• Subordination provisions
• Termination rights
• Management fees
• Operating and capital spending budget approval rights
• Preferred returns for owners
• Incentive fees for operators

Do you need to get a hotel operator, negotiate or renegotiate a hotel management agreement or terminate your hotel operator? Don't make the mistakes that so many other hotel owners and lenders have made.

1. Bring us in BEFORE discussions begin with hotel operators.

We know the players and can help you assess strengths, weaknesses and best fit. Our team adds significant value on the front end, helping guide strategy, approach and negotiating the critical provisions of your management agreement. For example, here are questions that we’ll help you answer:

• What are the “Tier 1” issues that your “nonbinding” LOI must cover, or you risk losing them forever?
• Can a portion of the operator base and incentive fees be subordinated to a performance standard?
• What kind of performance standards can align the operator-owner interests even better than an equity investment from the operator?
• What owner approval rights and controls will lenders, investors and buyers look for after you have cut your deal?
• Why do you want the operator to be your “fiduciary?”
• What provisions will prevent financing or refinancing, and slash up to 50% of your value on a sale?
• What terms are “market” for this brand and market segment?

2. A great hotel manager isn’t enough for you to be profitable—you also need a great management agreement.

Our team works hard to align the interests of your hotel manager with your financial success. Our experience helps our clients strike deals that are good for them—and fair to all sides.

We are a major gateway of hotel finance. We know all the players, regularly represent both users and providers of every kind of capital and we understand their respective “personalities,” standards and needs. We facilitate the flow of capital with our legal skill, hospitality industry knowledge and ability to find the right fit for all parts of the financing package—whether through commercial loans, joint venture funding or private equity investment.

Combining our unique hospitality knowledge with a long history of commercial and real estate finance experience, we know what it takes to protect the legal and business interests of all parties.

It is seldom that a law firm is so far on the cutting edge, or in the vanguard as a trend develops, that it can coin the name for that trend. But that’s exactly what JMBM has done with “hotel-enhanced mixed-use” projects, a term that describes one of the most significant developments in real estate. These are mixed-use projects where hotels are the sparkplug of energy and design that often drive the project’s success.

It’s also where each component of the project enhances the value and profitability of the other through integration, densification and carefully coordinated use of facilities. When the components are properly chosen and integrated, these projects showcase hotels working together with residential, office, retail, spa, entertainment, sports and shopping centers to mutually enhance the entire project's excitement and success.

In just the past five years we have assisted clients on more than 100 hotel-enhanced mixed-use projects in every major market in the U.S., throughout Latin America and in Europe. We help clients identify and cut a deal with the right hotel brand and operator as the key drawing card to every other development component, and make sure their interests are protected when structuring the highly complex documentation that mixed-use projects involve.

These projects are diverse and each is unique—JMBM’s industry sophistication and vision are the constants.

As the premier hospitality practice in a larger, full-service law firm, our Global Hospitality Group® has ready access to lawyers who are superior in all other critical aspects of making a hospitality project successful. That includes tax, environmental and land use permitting, litigation (particularly in the resolution of construction disputes), bankruptcy, restructuring and workouts, labor and employment, intellectual property issues, plus many others.

We “get it.” Our hotel attorneys are at the cutting edge of green hotel development, conversion and finance. We have produced the leading educational programs on green hotels. Several of our attorneys are going through the LEED AP (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professionals) certification process. We helped finance one of the largest and most significant green hotel mixed-use developments in the United States.

We understand both the carrots and the sticks of green hotels—how to comply with the laws and how to take advantage of economic incentive available to early adapters. We understand some of the unique issues presented in operating a green hotel on sustainable principles and are proud to have assisted in the formation of one of the first and best green hotel management companies.

We know all the players and are an integral part of the “green community” so we can help you fill out your team, whether it is a green architect, consultant or provider. You won't have to convince us you should go green, but we can help you take advantage of all the reasons that you should.

The Global Hospitality Group® identifies business goals, assembles the right team, strategizes the approach to optimize value—and then gets the deal done.