W Hotels Looks For New Flagship in New York

Date: March 2018

Location: Lexington Avenue, New York, NY, USA

Name: W New York – Four star

No. of Keys: 693

Seller/Current Owner: Capstone Equities and Dune Real Estate Partners. Capstone are a real estate company are involved with blue-chip partners like Carlyle Group, Capmark Investors and Harbor Group Intl, with fifteen office buildings in Manhattan such as 4 New York Plaza, The Beekman Tower and 587 Fifth Avenue.

Dune Real Estate is an investment firm with hotel assets such as The Mark in NY.

Looking For: A new home! Calling it an evolution of the brand, W Hotels has decided to search for a new flagship location here, and remove the W brand from its founding location on Lexington Avenue after 20 years. From this first location, Anthony Ingham, brand leader for W Hotels says “It started what W is today, now with 53 hotels around the world and 40 more in the pipeline under construction.”

Ten hotels are currently under renovation from the original North American portfolio. “We identified the hotels that structurally have the capability with the right amount of investment to be elevated to a level that matches the expectations of a consumer who has gotten used to the Ws we have been building both in the U.S. and internationally from scratch,” said Ingham. “That is a large renovation program, considering we have 25 hotels here.”

The brand also has four U.S. new-builds opening in 2019 and a location in Bellevue, WA, that opened in June 2017.

THPT Comment:  The hotel will leave the brand’s portfolio in April, and it is unknown whether it will fall under another brand in the Marriott International family, or another brand entirely, or be sold? I guess what was innovative and fresh in 1998, needs an overhaul every 20 years!

First Seen: Hotel Business