Florida Hotel Brokerage
and Hospitality Advisory

We know Florida. And Florida knows us.

Sunshine State Expertise

FLORIDA HOSPITALITY SALES AND CONSULTING SERVICES

With its corporate headquarters in Tampa, The Plasencia Group boasts a comprehensive track record in Florida, spanning over three decades as trusted advisor to owners of and investors in hotels and resorts in the Sunshine State’s key lodging markets.

Key Qualifications

  • Our firm has successfully completed over 130 engagements throughout the State.
  • Principals of The Plasencia Group tout more in-market transaction expertise in Florida than any other major commercial real estate firm.
  • The Plasencia Group’s disposition team has set price-per-key transaction records for several major-branded hotels in various markets across Florida.
  • The Plasencia Group has conducted transactions in nearly 50 Florida cities, encompassing over 25,000 rooms and serving 90 different clients.
  • We’ve worked on virtually every type of lodging engagement in the State, with balanced experience across resorts, full-service and select-service hotels.

Florida Hotel Brokerage and Advisory Services

Our team provides extensive experience in assisting hotel owners and lenders in the evaluation of their assets and the development of comprehensive portfolio and individual property strategies focusing on profitability even under the most challenging market conditions.

Having been through four separate economic cycles, The Plasencia Group is able to offer clients a robust menu of proven consulting and advisory services for both individual properties as well as portfolios. Additionally, the firm’s senior associates each bring decades of hospitality experience as either hotel owners or operators, or lenders to the industry.

Since 1993, The Plasencia Group has been a national leader in hospitality investment transactions. The Plasencia Group provides personalized investment services to life insurance companies, banks and pension funds, real estate investment trusts, and other owners of hotels, resorts, and golf courses throughout the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. The Plasencia Group’s principals have completed billions of dollars in hotel transactions in their combined careers and have executed some of the most challenging and complicated trades in the marketplace. Over the years, our professionals have worked with nearly every major brand, property type, operator, and ownership group in the lodging investment arena.

Much of The Plasencia Group’s transaction experience has been in portfolio engagements. The firm excels in targeting the most qualified investors for large-scale deals. We have been engaged to handle the sale of over 25 different hotel portfolios and debt instruments consisting of more than 33,000 hotel rooms located in 21 states.

Services include:

  • Dispositions
  • Acquisitions
  • Principal investments

Learn more about our investment sales services HERE.

Our team provides extensive experience in assisting hotel owners and lenders in the evaluation of their assets and the development of comprehensive portfolio and individual property strategies focusing on profitability even under the most challenging market conditions.

Having been through four separate economic cycles, The Plasencia Group is able to offer clients a robust menu of proven consulting and advisory services for both individual properties as well as portfolios. Additionally, the firm’s senior associates each bring decades of hospitality experience as either hotel owners or operators, or lenders to the industry.

Services include:

  • Asset management
  • Development management
  • Operator contract compliance
  • Partnership guidance

Learn more about our hospitality advisory services HERE.

The Plasencia Group’s Capital Markets division leverages long-standing relationships with a multitude of lenders and institutional providers of debt and equity, allowing clients to consummate transactions and growth strategies under the most advantageous terms. Our team specializes in orchestrating the refinancing of maturing debt pieces and the restructuring of existing instruments. The division focuses exclusively on hospitality properties, thus offering clients invaluable insight in a very specialized area that includes the underwriting of operating businesses. The relationships, expertise and proficiency of The Plasencia Group’s professionals are essential to the achievement of client goals.

Services include:

  • Equity sourcing
  • New debt placement
  • Refinancing services
  • Restructuring of existing debt

Learn more about our capital markets services HERE.

Representative Florida Engagements

Pier House Resort and Spa

Key West, FL | 142 Keys

Epicurean Hotel Tampa

Tampa, FL | 188 Keys

Courtyard Fort Lauderdale Weston

Weston, FL | 176 Keys

The Villages Hilton Portfolio

Wildwood & Lady Lake, FL | 177 Keys

Aloft Tampa Downtown

Tampa, FL | 130 Keys

Westin Tampa Bay

Tampa, FL | 252 Keys

Saddlebrook Resort Tampa

Wesley Chapel, FL | 519 Keys

Hyatt Place Jacksonville / St. Johns Town Center

Jacksonville, FL | 160 Keys

Aloft / Element Tampa Midtown

Tampa, FL | 226 Keys

AC Hotel Fort Lauderdale Beach

Fort Lauderdale, FL | 171 Keys

Dolphin Beach Resort

St. Pete Beach, FL | 173 Keys

Courtyard by Marriott Naples

Naples, FL | 102 Keys

DoubleTree Beach Resort Tampa Bay

Redington Beach, FL | 125 Keys

Parmer’s Resort

Little Torch Key, FL | 35 Keys | Private Client

SpringHill Suites & Residence Inn Clearwater Beach

Clearwater Beach, FL | 255 Keys | Key International

Westin Tampa Waterside

Tampa, FL | 309 Keys | Walton Street Capital

Hampton Inn / Home2 Suites Tampa Downtown Channel District

Tampa, FL | 213 Keys | Liberty Group

Thunderbird Beach Resort

Treasure Island, FL | 106 Keys | Private Client

Islander Resort

Islamorada, FL | 139 Keys | Hobbs & Curry

Hilton St. Petersburg Carillon Park

Hilton St. Petersburg Carillon Park

St. Petersburg, FL | 227 Keys | Hobbs & Curry

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Our Florida Team

Our experience can make your lodging investment strategy more successful. Get in touch with one of our Florida lodging investment professionals to discuss your holdings anywhere in North America.

Chief Executive Officer

Lou Plasencia

Tampa, Florida | Industry Tenure: 43 Years

As the firm’s Chairman and CEO, Lou Plasencia is responsible for The Plasencia Group’s business development activities and the oversight of all acquisitions, dispositions, and advisory engagements. He began his career with Hyatt Hotels Corporation over thirty years ago. After his departure from Hyatt, Lou spent a number of years growing the hospitality investment sales division of a major national commercial real estate firm.

A natural trailblazer, the father of three eventually left the corporate environment in 1993 to launch his own firm, The Plasencia Group, a boutique alternative to corporate hotel brokerage. The close-knit firm was born out of passion and sheer gumption. The oldest of three siblings, Lou arrived in Tampa’s cigar-making district as a young Cuban immigrant, living with his family in a one-room apartment. He is the son of a cigar factory worker who he says instilled in him the importance of “committing yourself to one thing and doing it ethically and better than anyone else.”

As an undergrad at Loyola University in New Orleans, he studied psychology and broadcast media before going on to get his master’s in education from Indiana University. After serving as a Student Affairs administrator at Indiana and then at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Lou landed a job in sales and marketing department at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. He eventually returned to Tampa to oversee the development of the Grand Hyatt on the shores of Tampa Bay. From there, he launched a long and storied career in hotel investment sales and consulting and is recognized today as one of the most experienced hotel real estate advisors in the country.

During his three-plus decades as the face of The Plasencia Group, Lou has steered a plethora of heavy-hitting hospitality deals, including one-off transactions and major portfolio disposition engagements. Over the years, he has brought together owners and investors for the InterContinental Hotels in Chicago and Miami, the Four Seasons in Atlanta, Amelia Island Resort in Northeast Florida, PGA National in Palm Beach, the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, and the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. Recognized for his integrity and deal savvy, he has served as a trusted advisor for Apollo Global, Brookfield Asset Management, Hilton Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, MetLife Real Estate Investments, Starwood Capital, and Walton Street Capital. Other transaction and consulting clients include Bank of America, Blackstone Group, Host Hotels & Resorts, PGIM, RLJ Lodging Trust and countless family offices and high-net-worth hotel and resort owners.

Lou is an active member of the Hospitality Investment Roundtable of the AHLA. He serves on the Boards of Directors of the Florida Council of 100, the Hillsborough County Tourist Development Council, the Advisory Board for Visit Tampa Bay, and chairs the School Advisory Council of St. Lawrence Parish in Tampa. He previously served on the Board of Trustees of Jesuit High School (Tampa).

A longtime resident of Tampa, he is proud to work alongside his three sons (Chris, Nick and John) in the family business. Lou has been married for four decades to his wife Jennifer, with whom he enjoys cooking, traveling, and playing “off the grid.” If he doesn’t answer his cell phone, it’s because he’s out fishing or hiking a forest.

“One of my favorite words in my native Spanish is “confianza”. It’s the close trust that builds in a friendship over time. It’s the very real affection we have for our longstanding clients. It’s also something we work hard to earn and, most importantly, it lasts a lifetime.”

Email:lplasencia@tpghotels.com

Senior Managing Director

Dexter Wood

New York / Palm Beach | Industry Tenure: 39 Years

Dexter Wood is an accomplished industry veteran with more than 38 years of diverse global hospitality, finance, and real estate experience. As Senior Managing Director at The Plasencia Group, he leads investment advisory efforts for the firm’s clients, including lodging transactions, developments, and strategic consulting, drawing on his almost four decades of experience at some of the world’s largest hotel and investment companies.

Dexter, who joined The Plasencia Group in 2019, does not come from a brokerage background. Rather, he brings to the team a wealth and breadth of experience that includes institutional hotel ownership, management, brand development, finance, strategy, consulting, and more. Spending time in New York and Palm Beach, Dexter anchors the Plasencia Group’s Northeastern presence and bolsters its national reach.

With The Plasencia Group, Dexter has been an influential multitasker, recently leading the investment sales team in the successful Disposition process of a six-hotel portfolio, spanning three states across the southeastern U.S. Additionally, he’s been instrumental in securing nearly $400 million of senior hotel loans to date. Most notably, in part due to the twice-refinancing of the iconic Vinoy Resort and Golf Club, Autograph Collection, in Downtown St. Petersburg, and the Dolphin Beach Resort in St. Pete Beach.

He is justifiably proud of having been part of a small team that put together the largest single-asset deal in the history of hotel real estate. As a senior vice president for Hilton, he was instrumental in the sale of the iconic Waldorf Astoria for $1.95 billion, a record not soon to be broken. What’s more, the team reinvested $1.8 billion of the proceeds in five hotels to facilitate a like-kind exchange transaction, thus avoiding capital gains taxes — and they did so in less than a month.

At Hilton, Dexter was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Development and Real Estate Finance and charged with governing the allocation of capital to drive new unit growth, brand expansion, advancement of the timeshare and management business, and value creation opportunities at owned properties. He led an international team of 50 professionals based in the US, London, Dubai, and Singapore. In 2017, he transitioned to Senior Vice President – Investments at Park Hotels & Resorts following Hilton’s spin-off of Park and Hilton Grand Vacations, which created three independent publicly traded companies.

Dexter spent most of the 2000s as senior vice president of global feasibility & portfolio analysis at Host Hotels, the world’s largest hotel real estate investment trust. Prior to that, he was director of financial advisory services/hospitality and real estate for PriceWaterhouseCoopers in New York. He began his career with Hospitality Valuation Services (HVS).

Dexter grew up in a small town in western Massachusetts and attended boarding school in New England. From there, he matriculated at Cornell University, where he started off studying chemical engineering. Finding that avenue unsuitable, Dexter, who bartended during summers and in his spare time, made the cut at Cornell’s prestigious School of Hotel Administration, earning a bachelor’s degree. He has remained active with the school ever since and is extremely proud to have attended the graduation of his daughter as a member of the Hotel School’s class of 2023.

Dexter has also served on the Advisory Board for the Hotel School’s Center for Real Estate Finance and the Center for Hospitality Research. He was a member of the Hotel Development Council at the Urban Land Institute and is an Executive Board Member of the Boy Scouts of America.
Dexter is an avid golfer, foodie, and wine enthusiast — both in the kitchen and as a restaurant guest.

“What attracted me to the Plasencia Group is that I’m not a broker, and Lou wasn’t looking for a broker. It seems that everyone in the company comes from another aspect of the industry, and we’ve all worn a lot of different hats.”

Email:dwood@tpghotels.com

Senior Vice President – Owner Representation

Tony Haddad

Miami, Florida | Industry Tenure: 42 Years

Tony Haddad became part of The Plasencia Group in 2013 and has been active in the hospitality finance arena for the past four decades. Tony brings to the table years spent in hotel operations, working as Director of Finance and as a regional executive responsible for a portfolio of hotels for Marriott International. Tony has extensive experience in domestic and international hotels in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America.

After leaving Marriott, Tony formed his own asset management and consulting firm, Thames Associates, LLC.

Tony holds a B.B.A. degree from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. A dedicated cyclist, he kicks off each workday with a group bike ride through suburban Broward County and enjoys riding his motorcycle on the weekends.

“You’re dealing with an industry that caters to happy people on vacation. It’s multifaceted and always changing. There’s creativity and design. You walk into something new, you learn about it, you opine about it, and then move on to the next one.”

Email:thaddad@tpghotels.com

Managing Director

Chris Plasencia

Tampa, Florida | Industry Tenure: 14 Years

As a Managing Director at The Plasencia Group, Chris Plasencia has closed over $2 billion in hospitality transactions over the course of his career, primarily portfolio and single asset dispositions of resorts and full- and premium select-service hotels. The resident attorney on the team, with a background in drafting, negotiating, and executing a wide variety of real estate deals, Chris is well equipped to handle complex hospitality transactions, while fielding the more-than-occasional attorney joke with grace. In addition to personal involvement with his parish and other local organizations, Chris also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Visit Tampa Bay and the Board of Trustees of Tampa Jesuit High School. Chris majored in history at Duke University and earned a law degree from the University of Florida, in addition to a Master’s degree in real estate.

When he’s not in the office, you can find him spending time with his kids, Claire, Thomas, and Mary, his wife, Katie, whom he’s known since kindergarten, and his golden retriever, Molly.

“I’m going to be with this company for the next 20, 30 years. I’m not looking for quick victories. I’m interested in building long-term relationships.“

Email:cplasencia@tpghotels.com

Managing Director

Nick Plasencia

Tampa, Florida | Industry Tenure: 16 Years

Nick Plasencia is a Managing Director with The Plasencia Group and specializes in the disposition of full-service, premium select-service, boutique and resort properties, both in single-asset and portfolio transactions. He has personally transacted more than $2 billion of lodging assets. Mr. Plasencia has had the opportunity to advise a wide breadth of clientele, ranging from privately held owner-operators and high-net-worth individuals to management companies, private equity funds, and publicly-traded REITs.

Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Plasencia worked in the Real Estate Investment Banking group of Raymond James, a publicly traded financial services firm, specializing in mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, and private placements. While at Raymond James, Mr. Plasencia was integrally involved in capital-raising assignments in the lodging sector, including preferred and common stock offerings.

Nick is a graduate of Harvard University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. During summer breaks, he worked in operations positions at branded full-service hotels, experiences he says helped give him a valuable glimpse into the human element of hotel operations.

Always keen to explore nature or a new city, Nick is a novice runner who credits his outdoorsy wife for introducing him to the sport. He enjoys hiking and backpacking during his travels and taking his children for runs in the jogger. Nick is a proud advocate for the Tampa Theater, a historic U.S. theater and city landmark, and has been involved in the Theater’s real estate pursuits and charitable events. He is a member of the Tampa Jesuit High School President’s Circle and enjoys watching the school’s sporting events with his family.

“Our strength is in our team and the unique backgrounds that our team members bring to the table, with experiences in all aspects of the industry, ranging from ownership to lending, operations, and brands.”

Email:nplasencia@tpghotels.com

Managing Director

John Plasencia

Tampa, Florida | Industry Tenure: 14 Years

John Plasencia joined The Plasencia Group in 2014 and, as Managing Director, he works on the firm’s investment sales efforts from Tampa, Florida. In his role, he guides asset sales and is responsible for investor solicitation. John has been directly involved in the transaction of hundreds of lodging properties. John previously served as Vice President and Senior Analyst with the firm.

Prior to joining The Plasencia Group, John worked in the Feasibility and Acquisitions departments at Interstate Hotels & Resorts, a global hotel management company that has since merged with Aimbridge Hospitality. While at Interstate, which was the largest hotel operator in the world during John’s tenure, John facilitated the procurement of numerous management contracts, in addition to the acquisition of other hotel management companies.

John is a graduate of Northwestern University. He is a loyal patron of Parasol’s in New Orleans and  Cattleack Barbecue in Dallas. He lives in Tampa with his wife, son, and their golden retriever.

“Hospitality is a service industry, and while we occupy a unique niche on the investment side of the industry, we work to provide a high level of service to our clients and help them achieve their investment goals.”

Email:jplasencia@tpghotels.com

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