Clarity to Complexity: A New Approach to Hotel Capital Solutions

By Jennifer Dakin, Managing Director, Berkadia Hotels & Hospitality

In today’s hotels and hospitality market, complexity is the baseline. Elevated interest rates, uneven demand recovery, and a selective credit environment are reshaping how owners and lenders approach financing, recapitalizations, and both near- and long-term strategies. To navigate this environment, sponsors are increasingly turning to advisory teams that combine technical rigor with deep market insight—teams that can underwrite nuance, read the room, and match the right capital to realistic, executable business plans.

Within Berkadia’s Hotels & Hospitality platform, an expansive, integrated team is dedicated to this work—and many of those professionals are women. Across production, underwriting, and capital markets, they are structuring sophisticated transactions, advising owners through periods of significant volatility, and mentoring the next generation of hospitality finance professionals on how to thoughtfully underwrite and structure deals.

Evolving Perspectives in a Shifting CRE Landscape

Although the industry remains male-dominated, meaningful progress is underway: more women on the finance and ownership side, more female asset managers, and a growing recognition that diverse, collaborative teams make better decisions.

Many women who entered hotel capital markets as the only woman in the room note how that experience shaped their professional approach: consistently over-prepared, deeply conversant in their deals and clients, and ready with a clear, data-driven point of view before they step into a meeting. Over time, that level of preparation and performance has helped redefine what “typical” looks like in hospitality finance and demonstrated that diverse teams often:

• Underwrite from multiple angles

• Identify emerging issues earlier

• Structure more resilient, risk-aware capital solutions

This perspective-rich approach has proven especially valuable in navigating complex situations and underscores the importance of bringing different viewpoints to the table.

Mentorship, Leadership, and Team Culture

For many emerging professionals in hotel finance, mentorship has been a defining factor. Early managers—both women and men—who were willing to:

• Provide true deal ownership

• Include junior team members in challenging client discussions

• Walk through the numbers and underlying assumptions

• Offer candid, constructive feedback

• Be transparent about how the business actually operates

• Have had an outsized impact on both capability and confidence.

Within Berkadia’s Hotels & Hospitality group, that philosophy shapes how teams are structured and led:

• Meaningful responsibility: Junior and mid-level professionals are given substantive roles on live assignments, not relegated to purely behind-the-scenes support.

• Emphasis on preparation and quality: Teams prioritize rigorous preparation, high-quality work product, and clarity around process and next steps—driving better execution while reinforcing core skills.

• Empowered participation: Leaders are intentional about creating an environment where colleagues at every level feel comfortable asking questions, contributing ideas, and stretching into new responsibilities.

This is not simply a cultural aspiration; it directly influences outcomes. When team members feel empowered, they are more willing to challenge assumptions, surface potential risks, and propose creative structuring ideas that ultimately enhance client results. It also strengthens their sense of ownership and fosters deeper mutual support across the team.

Building a Career in Hospitality Finance

For CREW readers at various stages of their careers, hospitality finance offers a dynamic and highly analytical path. Several themes consistently emerge from professionals who have built durable careers in this niche:

The Hotel Market Today: From Straightforward Deals to Complex Puzzles

The hotel financing environment has changed substantially over the last two decades. Prior cycles often featured strong performance, ample liquidity, and relatively straightforward deals—simpler capital stacks and narrower ranges of outcomes.

Today, many assignments resemble complex puzzles. Rate volatility, shifting market fundamentals, brand requirements, evolving guest behavior, and fluctuating lender appetite all intersect in ways that can materially alter a property’s capital story and influence how it is financed or refinanced.

In this context, hospitality capital markets work has become more advisory and strategic. More time is spent upfront:

• Stress-testing business plans

• Sensitizing pro formas to different rate and NOI scenarios

• Evaluating multiple potential structures

• Having direct conversations about what is realistically achievable while still respecting ownership’s objectives

Nuances around covenants, reserves, and structural flexibility now have an outsized impact on how an owner experiences a loan over its life and on ultimate value realization.

Bringing Clarity to a Complex Recapitalization

Recent years have presented a “perfect storm” for many hotel owners: higher interest rates, uneven demand recovery, rising operating costs, and a tighter credit environment. In that setting, teams with strong analytical discipline and clear, consistent communication can be the difference between a rushed, suboptimal outcome and a thoughtful, durable solution.

In one recent assignment, a well-located hotel was approaching a debt maturity in a rate environment markedly different from when the original loan was placed. The asset’s performance had partially recovered and still had upside; meanwhile, the existing lender was preparing to redeploy capital and was unwilling to extend on terms that aligned with the sponsor’s business plan.

Berkadia’s Hotels & Hospitality team re-underwrote the asset with a realistic, defensible view of its ramp, framed the narrative around the property’s resilience and the sponsor’s track record, and helped the client evaluate multiple paths: a short-term bridge, a more structured capital solution, and a full recapitalization. Through a targeted, disciplined process—and transparent communication with both the client and capital providers—the team secured a structure that protected downside risk while providing the sponsor the runway needed to execute its near-term business plan.

In situations like this, the value delivered is as much about clarity and alignment between borrower and lender as it is about the final term sheet. Teams that can translate among owner, operator, and lender perspectives—and anticipate what each party must see to proceed—are often the ones that arrive at the most durable solutions.

Aligning Expertise, Perspective, and Client Outcomes

Across assignments, one theme is consistent: the most effective hotel capital solutions come from teams that pair technical rigor with a wide range of experiences and perspectives.

On the technical side, the work is demanding. Cash flows, brand dynamics, market drivers, lender motivations, and sponsor objectives must all be understood in detail so that recommendations are grounded, defensible, and actionable.

On the human side, the ability to listen carefully, read the room, and connect dots across stakeholders is critical—especially when owners, partners, and lenders view the same asset through very different lenses.

Within Berkadia’s Hotels & Hospitality group, a significant portion of the team delivering this work is made up of highly accomplished women—producers, underwriters, and analysts, who are structuring transactions, shaping strategy, and mentoring colleagues across the platform. Their presence is not incidental; it is a key reason the team is well-positioned to perform in a market where nuance, judgment, and collaboration matter as much as access to capital. They are leading assignments across bank balance sheets, debt funds, CMBS lenders, and equity capital, and bringing those perspectives back to clients in the form of more tailored, execution-focused capital solutions.

As the hotel sector continues to evolve, the need for that combination of skills will only grow. For CRE professionals considering where to focus their careers, hospitality finance offers a front-row seat to some of the most complex, creative, and consequential capital decisions in the industry—and a meaningful opportunity to help shape how those decisions are made every day.