With the aim of changing the face and future of asset management, the Benchmark Owner Advisory Group (OAG), a division of Benchmark Hospitality International is challenging the tired image of hotel asset management with a new website that features an online data room and private client access to all documents.
Originally founded in 2011 as part of Benchmark Hospitality’s expansion of its asset management services, today the Owner Advisory Group brings focus, innovation, and expertise in a variety of disciplines key to successful asset management – real estate, finance, operations, technology and marketing. The company’s new website www.BenchmarkOAG.com combines these in a technically sophisticated format that offers clients data retrieval of their property documents, a client portal, e-newsletter and online reporting.
“Asset management has not kept pace with the change, challenge and complexity of the market today,” says Erik Johnson, the recently appointed vice president of Benchmark’s Owner Advisory Group. “The hotel industry sees the asset manager as a generalist, charged with a number of tasks from operations to value assessment, financial advice, real estate development and accounting.” Nor can the industry accept the superficial reporting process and canned solutions sometime offered by more conservative asset management firms. “Today’s complex and technically sophisticated market demands a far more specialized, dynamic and value-driven approach,” he asserts.
Real estate and operations are the prime influencers of a hotel’s value and OAG delivers in-depth expertise in both of these disciplines. OAG’s asset managers’ backgrounds in finance and real estate combined with Benchmark Hospitality’s broad and deep operations capabilities are key to maximizing owners’ asset values. OAG goes beyond the basics of merely reviewing on-the-surface, regularly reported financial data. Today’s market demands innovation, technical skills, business savvy and an eye towards tenacity and the ability to create solutions that address complex problems and impact value in a substantial and measurable way.
As part of Benchmark Hospitality International, one of America’s most trusted hotel management companies, OAG is able to offer owners the contributions of in-house industry talent, resources, skills and connections. When combined with OAG’s core expertise in finance, operations and real estate, the result is a comprehensive and dynamic means to maximizing owners’ asset values.
OAG’s style is collegial and collaborative, not authoritarian. The company values and nurtures relationships, considers all points of view and brings skills in conflict resolution to any problem or dispute. The result is outcomes that are sensible, responsible and relationship preserving. OAG provides services for a wide spectrum of hotels, from full-service and select-service hotels to branded and non-branded properties to value-oriented, upscale and luxury resorts and hotels.
“In asset management, accountability is all,” says Erik Johnson. “We practice what we preach with performance-based compensation arrangements. Owners hire an asset manager to see what they can’t always see for themselves, “says Mr. Johnson. To do this successfully, OAG relies on insight and vision that goes beyond the obvious, the courage to take a stand on industry issues, challenge norms and pose valid questions. “This is an invaluable asset to owners in preventing problems and unveiling opportunities.”
