Opwest Partners, a multi-disciplined investment and development firm which has mainly focused on upper-upscale and luxury lifestyle hotel properties since its founding in 2017, has partnered with My Place Hotels of America to make its first foray into the popular extended-stay segment.
“Hotels are such a unique asset class, and from a development standpoint, it really is a complicated product type to develop—probably the most complicated asset class to develop arguably,” said Tyler Kent, founder/managing principal, Opwest Partners. “So, we were laser-focused at the higher-end of the spectrum of hospitality. Over the years, we studied the select-service and extended-stay space more and more, and projects would cross our desks that lend themselves to that positioning that we thought were interesting, and so we would dig in on budgeting and design and just found that was a very interesting product type within the hotel asset class, and very much a differentiator to what we’ve done historically.”
He said that the performance of extended-stay, especially through the pandemic, was very compelling. “The performance metrics you’re seeing—whether it’s midscale or upper-midscale or if it’s a longer length of stay versus a shorter length of stay—the makeup of demand there is extremely compelling, and it really presents a different risk profile within the hotel asset categories that we found extremely attractive,” he said.
Kent continued, “When you think about capital availability, project viability and scalability, we see the extended-stay space as something that we can take our skillset in hospitality and apply it to that product type and scale it in a different way that you do luxury, or even upper-upscale.”
The company plans to open its first My Place property in Tucson, AZ, this month, and another in Northwest Tucson next year. “We have four locations in Phoenix that we are currently working on and then we are focusing on Texas, Nevada and California, as well,” he added.
Kent said he is excited about working with My Place, adding, “The Rivett family, who created the brand, has a tremendous amount of expertise in the extended-stay and midscale space, and the hotel space in general. We love what they have done in creating the concept from a design and programming standpoint.”
Ryan Rivett, cofounder/CEO, My Place Hotels, praised Opwest Partners. “They have a great background in hospitality as well,” he said. “For them to make the jump and to see the value in midscale extended-stay and make the jump from [luxury and upper-upscale] and making developing My Place their biggest priority is pretty substantial. It’s pretty exciting for us to have that kind of response from a substantial developer like that.”
Kent said that he hopes to develop 20 My Place hotels in the next five years.
