Dive Brief:

• Investment firm NewcrestImage has announced a strategic partnership with Coury Hospitality, acquiring a 50% stake in the management company. 
• The partnership will expand the portfolios of both Dallas-based companies, as well as leverage their existing resources and geographic reach to “compete, grow and succeed together,” Mehul Patel, chairman and CEO of NewcrestImage, said in the announcement. 
• The partnership builds on NewcrestImage’s strategy to develop and acquire new hotels in the luxury lifestyle space, which is expected to be a strong growth category, Patel told Hotel Dive.

Dive Insight:

According to Patel, Coury is one of the few hotel management companies solely dedicated to operating in the luxury lifestyle arena. 

“This new alliance with Coury enables us to continue our acquisition mindset in the lifestyle space with properties that will benefit from turnaround or repositioning, from adaptive historic reuse, or from ground-up development in high-growth, high-traffic destination markets,” Patel said. 

For properties that NewcrestImage acquires to convert into lifestyle hotels, Coury will be involved as operators, Coury Hospitality Founder and CEO Paul Coury told Hotel Dive, noting that NewcrestImage “wanted to be in the lifestyle hotel space without being operators.”

In February, Coury assumed management of The Sinclair, Autograph Collection, a 164-room hotel in Fort Worth, Texas, which jump-started the official partnership. The management company has begun enhancing several guest experience spaces at the property, including food and beverage, according to Patel. 

Coury currently manages 12 lifestyle hotels in six states, including 10 Marriott Autograph Collection properties, making it the largest operator of Autograph Hotels, the company claims. Coury has eight hotels in the pipeline and is working with NewcrestImage on other new deals within the boutique and lifestyle hotel space. 

NewcrestImage, with a portfolio of 70 hotels across 26 states, has ramped up its investment in hotel properties in recent months. In March, the firm, along with Phoenix-based Hospitality Capital Partners, acquired 16 hotels for $137.3 million from Service Properties Trust.

Coury is not the first hotel management company that NewcrestImage has held a stake in. 

In January 2022, NewcrestImage sold a 27-hotel portfolio to Summit Hotel Properties for $822 million. Following the deal, NewcrestImage transferred its existing hotel management agreement rights at those properties to Aimbridge Hospitality and became a minority shareholder of the management company. 

The deal allowed NewcrestImage to begin acquiring new hotels, with Aimbridge as strategic operating partner, the investment firm said in a statement.