Heller Ehrman's hospitality practice includes transactions (acquisition and sale, joint venture, development, financing and management agreement negotiations), operational matters (employment, leasing, construction, service contracts, ADA compliance and deficit funding arrangements), operator/owner disputes (over issues ranging from fee calculation to budget approval to termination efforts) and the workout, restructuring or bankruptcy of financially distressed hospitality assets.

Representing all Segments of the Hospitality Industry

Heller Ehrman's Hospitality Group has extensive experience and proficiency in virtually every aspect of the hospitality industry.  Our hospitality practice began more than two decades ago with our representation of national syndicators and several offshore interests in their acquisitions and financings of hotel portfolios. Since then, we have created an internationally recognized hospitality practice, comprised of lawyers who are sought out by the most significant players in the industry, including operators, ownership groups, equity investors and lenders. Our balanced practice allows us to bring a unique perspective to the issues confronting each of the various actors in the industry. We regularly represent:

• Banks
• Developers
• Foreign/Domestic Investors
• Franchisees
• Investment Banks
• Management Companies
• Owners
• Pension Fund Advisors
• Venture Funds 

Our Hospitality Group represents several pre-eminent international operators as counsel on projects throughout the United States and the world. We work on a broad variety of development and operational matters ranging from the structuring, negotiating and documenting of complex joint ventures and development arrangements, to counseling our operator clients on such matters as labor, tax and general compliance with applicable laws. In our role as operator’s counsel, we routinely prepare and negotiate the full range of hotel documents, including:

• Management agreements
• Technical services agreement
• Intellectual property, license and transfer agreements
• Golf, spa and recreational use and access agreements
• Equity participation/venture agreements
• Franchise agreements
• Marketing and management agreements for serviced condominiums and apartments
• Marketing and management agreements for fractional ownership projects

With the benefit of our experience working from the inside perspective of operators, we have developed an equally extensive practice in purchase and sale transactions and debt and equity financings, in the representation of lenders and owners in their dealings with operators and, particularly in challenging economic times, in the financial workout, restructuring or bankruptcy of hotel and resort properties. A significant part of our hospitality practice involves the representation, in close coordination with our tax lawyers, of REITs, pension trusts and other public and private tax-exempt entities and investment advisors to tax-exempt entities in equity, debt or hybrid investment transactions.

Our lawyers have written extensively on various areas affecting the hospitality industry and regularly lecture on many of the current issues facing our industry. Several of our lawyers are frequent featured speakers at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles and Real Estate Opportunity & Private Fund Investing Forum. Heller Ehrman is regularly called upon by many of the most influential persons in the industry and in the media for our judgment and perspectives on the most challenging issues facing the hospitality industry.

Heller Ehrman's Breadth of Hospitality Experience

We represent owners and operators of numerous internationally recognized hotel and resort properties around the world. Through these deals and day-to-day representation on hotel matters, we are completely conversant with both the real estate issues and the unique business issues faced in hotel transactions – working regularly from diverse perspectives on matters involving:

• Acquisitions & sales
• Liquor & Other Licensing
• Bankruptcies
• Litigation
• Development
• Memberships Programs
• Condo-Hotels
• Management Agreements
• Environmental
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Franchises
• Mixed-use Projects
• Golf Facilities
• Senior & Mezzanine Finance
• Insurance
• Tax
• International
• Trademark & IT
• Joint Ventures & LLCs
• Workouts & Foreclosures
• Labor & Union