Del Olmo takes helm at Sage
DENVER – Sage Hospitality Group has appointed Daniel del Olmo as president and chief executive officer, becoming the hospitality company’s third CEO, succeeding Co-Founders Zack Neumeyer and Walter Isenberg, who each served as CEO since its founding in 1984.
Sage, operating more than 140 hotels today, stated that the transition reflects a multi-year succession plan designed to ensure continuity of purpose, leadership stability and long-term value creation.
As part of the leadership transition, Isenberg will assume the role of executive chairman of the board, remaining actively engaged in culture, strategy and growth.
Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board Zack Neumeyer will assume the role of chairman emeritus and vice chairman of the board, remaining actively engaged in long-term strategy, capital formation and board leadership.
Del Olmo joined Sage in early 2020 with a clear path toward executive leadership and has since assumed increasing responsibility across the enterprise. Most recently, he served as co-CEO alongside Isenberg, leading enterprise strategy, performance, operations and owner relations across Sage’s hotel and restaurant portfolio.
Looking ahead, del Olmo will focus on executing Sage’s long-term enterprise strategy, with an emphasis on nurturing the company’s You Belong culture, pursuing quality growth and strengthening operations across the portfolio.
“Our purpose remains unchanged,” del Olmo added. “We will continue to create and operate distinctive properties rooted in their communities and driven by purpose, while elevating how we execute, innovate and support our teams. That is how we advance our vision of redefining how the world experiences hospitality, positioning Sage as the hospitality industry’s most sought-after Experience Company.”
“Daniel has earned this role,” Isenberg said. “Over the past six years, he has demonstrated the leadership discipline, financial rigor and cultural alignment necessary to guide Sage into its next chapter. He understands who we are, what we stand for and how we create value for our partners. I have complete confidence in his leadership.”
“This transition reflects years of disciplined planning and leadership development,” Neumeyer said. “Daniel has earned the trust of the Board, our partners and our teams. Sage was built to endure beyond any one individual, and this moment reflects the strength of our culture, our strategy and our leadership bench. As co-founders, Walter and I built Sage on the belief that hospitality can enrich lives and that foundation remains firmly in place as we enter this next chapter.”
LOS ANGELES — Extended-stay hotels are not a new thing, but Noble Investment Group founder and CEO Mit Shah says it's still a segment rife with opportunity for long-term investors.
In an interview during the Americas Lodging Investment Summit, Shah said there's a persistent gap for hotel guests seeking monthslong stays but a higher degree of safety and reliability than offered on short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb.
Noble Investment Group has made several investments in that segment in recent history, including the January purchase of a portfolio of 14 WoodSpring Suites hotels.
"What we've been doing with our investments in extended stay in this last portfolio is very consistent with a number of portfolios that we've been buying," Shah said. "It actually was a very interesting portfolio. ... But our business model for that was to acquire existing assets that had strong in-place income streams. So eight-plus percent on leverage yields, but then flip the operating model such that two-thirds of that revenue base were customers that were staying 30-plus nights."
Longer hotel stays clearly equate to larger profits, Shah said.
"Your housekeeping costs go down. Your role in terms of the customers get much more stickier and much more durable, and that allows you to drive a very high margin, even though your ultimate rate on those 30-plus nights might go down, the profitability actually increases and expands," he said.
Shah described this approach to prioritizing month-plus stays over things like weeklong stays as "extended stay 2.0" or "branded long-term accommodations." In addition to having a streamlined operating model, these hotels will need to make a shift in how potential guests find you, he added.
"They're not booking through [online travel agency] channels," he said. "So a lot of it is direct."
The hotel brand companies have been recently making investments in this space as well, with both Marriott International and Hilton launching apartment-focused brands that cater to monthslong stays better than even traditional extended-stay and studios brands, Shah said.
"They prioritize the value of being a part of their loyalty programs, and they want them to curate these kinds of not only experiences in terms of travel, but in how they live and how they stay," he said.
The different disruptions to travel demand provided a challenging backdrop for 2025, but Apple Hospitality REIT was able to pull other levers to adapt.
During the hotel real estate investment trust's fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings call, Apple REIT President and CEO Justin Knight said that leisure travel remained strong across its portfolio. Policy uncertainty and a pullback in government travel affected midweek demand, temporarily disrupting the steady improvement in midweek occupancy that characterized much of 2024.
In response, Apple REIT's asset management and hotel teams adjusted their strategy to optimize their business mix, layering on additional group business to bolster market share and strengthen overall portfolio performance, he said. This allowed the company's hotel portfolio to achieve comparable hotel revenue per available room of $118 for the full year, down 1.6% compared to 2024.
Preliminary results show comparable hotel RevPAR dipped 1.6% year over year in January 2026 primarily due to challenging comparisons related to wildfire recovery-related business in California, Knight said. The presidential inauguration also benefited its Washington, D.C.-area hotels a year ago. Winter storms weighed heavily on January and early February results as well.
“But occupancies have improved meaningfully, with recent weeks showing significant year-over-year growth,” he said.
Apple REIT’s outlook for 2026 calls for comparable hotel RevPAR to be flat at its midpoint, falling in line with the STR forecast for its chain scales, Knight said.
“We believe that this represents a measured base case scenario for our portfolio, with early summer potentially benefiting from incremental leisure travel related to the FIFA World Cup 2026 and easier comparisons to periods adversely impacted by cuts in government spending, tariff announcements and the government shutdown in late 2025,” he said.
This outlook may ultimately prove conservative, with January and February seasonally lower occupancy months, he said. It’s early in the year to identify trends for business or leisure travel with conviction.
“As we saw last year, the possibility of policy-related demand disruption is real,” he said. “We are, however, optimistic about the setup for the year and feel we are well-positioned, regardless of how things play out in the broader economy.”
Portfolio update
In January, Apple REIT completed the transition of its 13 Marriott International-managed hotels to franchised consolidated management with third-party management companies, Knight said.
“We are confident these transitions, together with a select number of additional market-level management consolidations, will further drive operating performance at our hotels,” he said. “In the case of the Marriott-managed assets, the transition away from brand management will also provide us with additional flexibility and increase the marketability of the hotels in the future as we consider select dispositions.”
While Apple REIT’s long-term goal is to grow its portfolio, its stock traded at an applied discount to value achievable in private-market deals, Knight said. For much of the past year, it capitalized on the disconnect by selectively selling hotels and redeploying the proceeds into buying back its own stock and preserving its balance sheet as a guardrail against potential macroeconomic volatility and allow for quick responses to accretive acquisition opportunities.
In 2025, Apple REIT sold seven hotels for a combined gross sales price of about $73 million, he said. That allowed it to repurchase 4.6 million common shares for a total of about $58 million.
The REIT was able to use 1031 Exchanges to reinvest gains on hotel sales by redeploying proceeds into acquisitions, including for the Homewood Suites Tampa-Brandon, which is adjacent to its Embassy Suites in the market, and the Motto by Hilton Nashville Downtown that it acquired in late December upon completion of construction.
It still has forward commitments for two future hotel development projects that are currently in the early stages, including a dual-branded AC Hotel and Residence Inn property located adjacent to its SpringHill Suites in Las Vegas, and an AC Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, he said. The Anchorage project has broken ground and is scheduled to be complete in late 2027.
Construction hasn’t started for its two Las Vegas hotels, but the current timeline shows completion during the second quarter of 2028, he said. There are no pending acquisitions slated for 2026.
Apple REIT will continue to adjust its capital allocation strategy in response to market conditions and act on opportunities when the timing is right, he said. In the near term, that means pursuing select hotel sales to redeploy proceeds at a multiple spread and manage future capital expenditure needs as well as increase its exposure to potentially higher growth markets.
The company’s historical annual capital expenditure spend has ranged between 5% and 6% of its total revenue, Knight said. Combined with higher margins, the lower capital expenditure obligation allows it to produce meaningfully more free cash flow from operations, which it then uses to fund shareholder distribution and strategic investment.
For the full-year 2025, the company spent approximately $88 million on capital expenditures, he said. It expects to reinvest between $80 million and $90 million this year, with major renovations planned for about 21 of its hotels. That includes the conversion of its Residence Inn Seattle Lake Union into a Homewood Suites in the fourth quarter.
By the numbers
For the fourth quarter, Apple REIT reported revenue of $326.4 million, down from $333 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to its earnings release. For the full year, it reported revenue of $1.41 billion, down from $1.43 billion the year before.
Apple REIT reported net income of $29.6 million for the quarter, down 0.7% year over year. It reported $175.3 million for the full year, down 18.1% from 2024.
Comparable hotels adjusted hotel earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was nearly $99.2 million for the quarter, down 8.4% year over year. Comparable hotels adjust hotel EBITDA for the full year was $474.2 million, a 6.4% year-over-year decrease. Comparable hotels adjusted hotel EBITDA margin for the quarter was 31.1%, down 210 basis points, while it was 34.3% for the full year, down 190 basis points.
As of Dec. 31, 2025, Apple REIT reported cash on hand of approximately $9 million with roughly $587 million through its revolving credit facility. It had approximately $1.5 billion of total outstanding debt with a current combined weighted-average interest rate of approximately 4.7%. Excluding unamortized debt issuance costs and fair value adjustments, its total outstanding debt comprised approximately $184 million in property-level debt secured by 10 hotels and approximately $1.4 billion outstanding under its unsecured credit facilities. Its weighted-average debt maturities were roughly three years.
In July, Apple REIT entered into a new term loan facility with a principal amount of $385 million with a maturity date of July 31, 2030. At closing, it repaid all amounts outstanding under its $225 million term loan facility, resulting in a leftover $160 million used to repay the balance outstanding under its revolving credit facility and general corporate purposes.
During the fourth quarter of 2025, Apple REIT bought back approximately 1.1 million of its common shares at a weighted-average market purchase price of approximately $11.77 per share for a total purchase price of approximately $13.1 million. By the end of 2025, it had repurchased 4.6 million common shares at a weighted-average market purchase price of about $12.55 per share for a total price of about $58.3 million. It had about $242.5 million remaining under its share repurchase program by the end of the year.
As of press time, Apple REIT’s stock was trading at $12.15 per share, down $16.9% year over year. The NYSE Composite Index was up 17.7% for the same period.
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