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The Hotel Investor Playbook
Welcome to The Hotel Investor Playbook, hosted by real estate investor and hospitality operator Michael Russell. Michael is the co-founder of Malama Capital and Howzit Hostels, and has built a personal real estate portfolio exceeding $20 million.
With an operator-first mindset, Michael brings a practical perspective to hotel investing. On the show, he breaks down what it actually takes to scale from short-term rentals into boutique hotels, covering deal sourcing, operations, capital strategy, and risk.
Each week, Michael shares real lessons from the field as he builds toward a $400 million real estate business, giving listeners an honest look at the decisions, challenges, and strategies behind the growth. Subscribe and follow along as he documents the journey in real time.
Episodes
95 episodes
Wall Street Trader Turned Hotel Broker: The Deal 40 Brokers Couldn't Close | Amiti Bhow E94
A 33-key Art Deco hotel in Miami sat on the market for five years. Forty brokers tried to sell it and failed. Amiti Bhow, Vice President at NewGen Advisory, finally got it done, not because she found a higher price, but because she found a buye...
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The PhD Economist Who Buys Hotels and Turns Them Into Apartments | Alexander Cartwright E93
Alexander Cartwright is a PhD economist who left a tenured professorship to buy distressed hotels and convert them into workforce housing through his company, HotelSHIFT. His business rests on a simple valuation gap: hotels trade at higher cap ...
Why This Fund Ditched US Real Estate For 18% Appreciation In Portugal | Dan Daly E92
Dan Daly runs a fund that invests in boutique hotels across Europe, and on this episode he makes the case for why, in his view, Portugal beats the US on nearly every number that matters. According to Dan, property there has appreciated roughly ...
AutoCamp CEO: From Five Broken Airstreams to a Hilton Partnership | Neil Dipaola E91
Neil Dipaola bought five wrecked Airstreams off Craigslist in 2012 to use as affordable housing in a Santa Barbara mobile home park. Today those trailers have grown into AutoCamp, a nine-property outdoor hospitality brand backed by Airstream, p...
$500 Million Hotel Broker: Why Your Franchise Flag Might Be Capping Your Hotel's Revenue | Chris Kilcullen E90
Chris Kilcullen has spent three decades in hotels, closing more than $500 million in deals as a senior broker at Avison Young. He's also sold franchises, brokered acquisitions for a REIT, and now built his own hotel concept, so he's seen the fl...
The $1 Billion Investor: Why Now is a Good Time to Buy | Neal Bawa E89
He's not a hotel investor. He built his career in multifamily and self-storage, growing a portfolio that peaked near $1 billion across more than 4,000 units. But the way he underwrites deals, ranks markets, and raises capital works across every...
The Travel Influencer With 1.6M Instagram Followers Who Became a Hotel Developer | Jake Snow E88
Most hotel investors build the product first and spend years chasing an audience to fill it. This guest flipped the order entirely.In this episode, Michael Russell sits down with a travel content creator who built a following of over a m...
How a $800K Distressed Motel Became a $2.4M Revenue Machine | Michael Russell E87
Most people walk past the ugly deal. That's exactly why the ugly deal is where the money is.In this episode, Michael Russell sits in the hot seat as a guest on the Lights On Podcast, sharing the unfiltered story behind how he acquired a ...
The Wellness ROI Audit Every Boutique Hotel Owner Needs to Run | Emily Johnson E86
In this episode, you'll learn how to diagnose whether your property is actually a candidate for wellness positioning, and if it is, how to implement it in a way that lifts ADR without blowing out your expense line.A hospitality strategis...
The $0-Down Hotel Deal That Still Cost $1.5 Million | Christian Osgood E85
It took zero dollars of his own money to buy a $4.5 million waterfront resort. It took three years and over a million and a half dollars out of pocket just to keep it.In this episode, you'll discover the deal, debt, equity sequence he sa...
The Boutique Hotel Mistake Killing Your Occupancy (And the Fix That Took One Operator From 40% to 80%) | Hillary Folkvord E84
Most boutique hotel operators are leaving serious money on the table, not because of bad locations or bad products, but because of bad marketing fundamentals that nobody told them about.In this episode, you'll hear exactly how one operat...
From $50 in His Bank Account to a 140-Key Hotel in Italy | Emanuele Pani E83
What happens when you find a deal that could change everything, but you've drained your bank account just to close it?In this episode, you'll hear exactly how one operator went from cleaning parking lots to owning the building, and what ...
This Contractor Built a $6M Hospitality Brand With $90K and Zero Outside Investors | Chris Broomfield E82
Most people assume you need outside investors, a big budget, or a prime location to build a profitable hospitality brand. This episode proves otherwise.In this episode, you'll learn exactly how one builder went from working as a contrac...
Stop Deferring Your Joy: How High-Performing Leaders Stay Sharp Without Burning Out | Mike Messeroff E81
You hit your targets. You built the business. So why does it still feel like something's missing?In this episode, you'll discover why deferring your happiness until the next deal, the next promotion, or the next milestone is quietly dest...
How 2 Women Turned a $1.2M Zillow B&B Into a $4M Treehouse Hotel (No Investors) | Ashley LaRocque E80
What if you bought a rundown bed and breakfast on Zillow, moved in the next day, and turned it into Colorado's first luxury treehouse hotel, all without raising a single dollar from outside investors?That's exactly what Ashley LaRocque a...
The $600K Treehouse Earning $200K a Year | Dustin Feider E79
In this episode, you'll discover how a single ultra-niche lodging unit can outperform a full hotel on cash-on-cash returns and what that signals for boutique investors paying attention.A treehouse designer whose work has been featured in...
The Hotel-to-Apartment Strategy That Turned $8.5M Into $18.9M in 19 Months | Ryan Sudeck E78
What if the most overlooked apartment deal in your market is already built, it's just flagged as a hotel?In this episode, you'll discover how a valuation gap between hotels and multifamily creates forced equity of 40 to 50% before you ch...
What a $75M Commercial Investor Wished He Knew Before Opening His First Boutique Hotel | Tyler Cauble E77
Experienced real estate investors make the jump into hospitality every year. Most of them underestimate what they're getting into.In this episode, you'll hear what it actually looks like when a seasoned commercial operator buys his first...
An STR operator's $4 million bet on building a boutique hotel in Colombia | Tim Hubbard E76
What does it actually cost to build a boutique hotel from scratch in a foreign country? More than you think, and not just financially.A short-term rental operator running 220+ properties across 40 cities is now three years into building ...
Under $1.5M in Revenue? You Don't Own a Business, You Own a Job | Greg Emmert E75
Most people who buy their first hospitality property don't realize they just bought themselves a 90-hour-a-week job. The difference between owning a business and being trapped inside one comes down to a single number most investors never bother...
The Revenue Expert Managing $125M Says You're Leaving 40% on the Table | Jasper Ribbers E74
Jasper Ribbers went from trading equities on Wall Street to traveling to 100 countries as a digital nomad, funding it all from a single Airbnb apartment in Amsterdam. Today, he manages pricing strategy for over $125 million in annual short-term...
What Hotel Investors Can Steal From a Land Investor Who's Done 400 Deals | Brent Bowers E73
What does a land investor who's done 400+ deals have to teach hotel investors? More than you'd expect.In this episode, you'll discover how the same principles behind finding off-market sellers, creating value through entitlements, and bu...
An Overlooked Strategy That Makes $7M Hotel Deals Actually Pencil | Ben Wolff E72
Fear of making the wrong move is why most aspiring hotel investors never get started. And ironically, that hesitation is costing them more than any mistake ever would.In this episode, you'll learn how one developer went from zero hotel e...
Former Hotel Analyst Built AI to Fix the Problem He Lived Every Day | Ziggy Hallgarten E71
If you're still tracking your hotel pipeline in Excel and spending two hours screening each deal, you're working harder than you need to. Ziggy Hallgarten lived with that frustration as an analyst, so he built the solution.In this episod...
How to Scale to 4 Hospitality Properties Without Raising Millions in Capital | Sam Degenhard E70
What if there's a way to scale a hospitality portfolio without having to own the real estate? For operators looking to grow quickly without raising millions in equity or navigating complex bank financing, the OpCo-PropCo model offers a compelli...
