For nearly 47 years, Hunter Hotel Advisors has brought buyers and sellers together to make deals. And, for more than 35 years, the Hunter Hotel Investment Conference has brought the hospitality world together to learn, to interact—and to make deals.
But, according to Bob Hunter, founder of both Hunter Hotel Advisors and the Hunter Conference, he had no idea that he and his businesses would have the longevity and influence they have today. “There was no grand plan,” said Hunter. “We just evolved.”
That evolution has made him witness to—and a participant in—a tremendous number of changes in the industry, from economic downturns and a pandemic, to the rise of the brands and an immigrant community achieving the American dream.
Bob Hunter at the 1998 Conference
Start of a family business
In the early 1970s, while working at a corporate job with IBM, Hunter dabbled in investing in Atlanta real estate. When his son Teague was born, he decided to go into real estate full time.
Bob took his first steps into the hotel industry when he worked with a lender who had taken properties back after an economic downturn.
“I decided I liked that industry well enough that I started specializing in it, turning down other opportunities outside of that and actively pursuing hotel brokerage,” he said.
He launched his own brokerage firm in 1978. Along the way, his two sons, Lee and Teague, joined the business.
Teague Hunter’s journey into the hotel industry wasn’t a straightforward path. After graduating from college in 1995, he decided not to follow in his father’s footsteps and instead entered the world of technology by joining IBM, where his mother worked. She would work there for 30 years.
“I remember graduating college and saying, ‘No, dad, I’m not going to work for you; I’m going to go make my own way,’” he recalled.
Bob Hunter at an early edition of the Hunter Investment Conference with Michael Leven, then-president/COO of Days Inn (left) and Dr. David Pavesic (right), who was then director of Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality at GSU. They’re holding an issue of Hotel Business.
It didn’t take long for him to realize that corporate America wasn’t the right fit for him. “I quickly learned that I didn’t care for it,” he said. “Anyone with any talent left, and I felt like it just wasn’t the place for me.”
With the mentorship of his father, Teague started learning the ropes of the hotel industry from the ground up.
“I would go do all the work—tough work—that he didn’t want to do,” he said. “Make all the phone calls trying to sell the hotels. And you learn. Boy, you learn very quickly.”
Teague is now president/CEO of the firm.
Lee Hunter, on the other hand, pursued a career in hospitality from the get-go, but not with his father. After earning a master’s degree from Cornell’s Hotel School in 1998, he worked on the “buy side” of the industry for several years. His first role was as a senior analyst at Harden Capital, a development company focused on developing Hilton Garden Inns.
He later moved on to work at Stormont Trice before ultimately deciding to return to Hunter Hotel Advisors in 2005.
“I’d been on the buy side for a few years, and I thought, ‘OK, now it’s time to take that knowledge to the sell side,’” he said.
Lee currently serves as COO of the company.
Bob Hunter working the phones in the ’90s trying to make deals happen.
Success and firsts
The senior Hunter said there were a number of factors that helped the company along the way.
At the same time that he was building his business, the Indian-American community was starting its involvement in the U.S. hotel industry.
“We got to know the Indian-American community early on in our career,” Bob said. “That was a wonderful thing for the industry— and personally for us because we got to know the individuals very well because we’d work very closely over a long period of time with someone.”
In fact, Bob said he was one of only a select few non-Asians at the first meeting of AAHOA. “There were about 125 people,” he said. “It was here in Atlanta. That conference and association has grown tremendously.”
In addition to seeing the entry of the Indian-Americans, he was also involved with Wall Street taking an interest in hospitality.
The company brokered the purchase of 15 Shoney’s Inns to Motels of America, a New York-based company, for $50 million in 1994, which is more than $100 million in today’s currency.
“It was probably one of the earliest deals with Wall Street coming out to invest in the hotel business,” he said. “Wall Street investors recognized that hotels were a profitable investment, so they entered the business. That was a big change because they brought money, expertise and structure to the industry. That was a big plus.”
Teague and Lee Hunter on stage at last year’s Hunter Conference
In 1993, the brokerage sold the first property (a Comfort Inn in Atlanta) to a hotel real estate investment trust (REIT)— RFS Hotel Investors Inc., based in Memphis.
“That was fun,” he said. “It was interesting because you would have thought it would have come from Wall Street, but at the time, Memphis was the center of the hotel world because Holiday Inn started there.”
Bob has also witnessed the emergence of the technology that has changed the entire industry—from the way that hotels are bought and sold to the guest experience.
Teague described what his father went through: “Back in the old days, there was no internet; there was barely even a fax machine. You had to get on the phone or in the car and literally drive around, knock on a hotel’s door and say, ‘Hi, I am Bob Hunter. Do you want to buy a hotel?’ or ‘Do you want me to help you sell your hotel?’ Today, we push a button and 50,000 people see that there’s a hotel for sale.”
Lee remembers when he would go to a hotel and take nearly 100 pictures of the property, wait to have them developed and paste them in a book and mail then to a prospect.
“When someone called and was interested in a property, you would fax them a confidentiality agreement and wait to get it signed and faxed back,” he said. “You then dropped the package in the mail, and they received it three days later. Today, that takes place in the span of 10 minutes.”
Bob appreciates that the industry has been able to balance technology with the human aspect.
“We’ve embraced the benefits of technology—computers and automation—but we’ve also made sure to preserve the human touch,” he said. “For example, I still appreciate the front-desk clerk; they’re a key part of the hotel experience. Yes, having a kiosk for check-in is more efficient, but there’s something comforting about seeing a smiling face when you’ve just arrived after a long flight or in bad weather. That warmth makes a big difference. I like that we’ve adopted technology to improve efficiency, but we’ve also held onto that personal connection.”
That personal connection is still extremely important. “Even with all of that technology, deals are still done with people,” said Teague. “It’s a reason we go to conferences. The reason people still come to ours is that people get business done with people.”
Bob, who retired from Hunter Hotel Advisors in 2018, added, “Human touch in the deal-making is important. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings. It is not AI making the deal or a computer talking to a computer—it’s a person talking to a person.”
The Hunter family, clockwise from top, Bob, Teague, Becky and Lee
Birth of a conference
The idea for the Hunter Conference came when Bob was attending the NYU conference at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in the late ’80s.
“I was in the front row of the main ballroom, attending a session on hotel finance,” he said. “After an hour-long lecture, where I had been frantically taking notes, the speaker casually mentioned, ‘Oh, by the way, we don’t do deals where the financing is less than $50 million.’ At that point, I realized none of the information I had just written down applied to the clients I worked with, since most of them weren’t involved in deals of that size. I was a bit irritated that he hadn’t shared that up front.”
At the show, Hunter approached Jerry Merkin, then-publisher of Hotel-Motel Management magazine, who would go on to found Hotel Business in 1992, and asked him if he would support a conference in Atlanta for owners who wanted to do deals under $50 million. He agreed to help, and “that was the beginning,” Bob said. “His support and encouragement were crucial. If he had said, ‘No, you can’t do that in Atlanta,’ it might have been the end of it. But, instead, he said, ‘Yes, we’ll be there,’ and that was the spark that led to everything.”
In 1988, the first conference—dubbed the Hotel/Motel Investment Conference—was held at what was then the Atlanta Doubletree—with 92 attendees and 25 speakers.
“Our big attendees were the Holiday Inn owners who owned five to 10 Holiday Inns and didn’t feel comfortable going to Manhattan to talk about these topics,” said Bob. “All around the Southeast, there were a lot of smaller hotel owners.”
From that initial conference, the event grew and grew each year.
“It was clear that it was working,” he said. “The family values and personal touch we had with the attendees, sponsors and speakers really made a difference. These were all people we knew personally, people we called and asked, ‘Please come speak at our conference.’ It became a great story of personal growth. There was never any doubt about whether we’d keep doing it—of course, we would. It was working, people wanted it, and, over time, it turned into something real. But, at the beginning, it was just a side gig.”
Young Teague and Lee with their mother, Becky, who helped support the family in the early days of the brokerage
In the early years, the conference, which was presented through a partnership with the Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration at Georgia State University, was not profitable, with some initial partners dropping out after a few years.
“Bob was funding the conferences with his own money, just trying to break even,” said Teague. “The first few didn’t make anything back, but you keep going. Then, eventually, it starts to break even, and then it makes a little bit. But every dollar that came in just got reinvested into the next year’s conference.”
He continued, “For more than 20 years, there were no profits taken from the conference—it was all reinvested. On one hand, you could call it a terrible business model, but Bob wasn’t in it to make money. He believed the industry needed this conference. The people in the industry needed to come together. It wasn’t about the Wall Street crowd; it was about the Main Street people—those who didn’t have all the data and resources but needed to connect, share what they were seeing and learn from each other. ‘Here’s what I’m seeing.’ ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve seen the same thing.’ We just kept bringing people together, year after year, and it took on a life of its own.”
For most of its existence, the conference did not have the Hunter name in its official title, even though most attendees referred to it as the Hunter Conference. “It was never about us; it was always about the industry,” said Lee.
Through the years, the Hunters have focused on attracting attendees by providing valuable, relevant content that speaks directly to owners, developers and investors.
“If we’re able to get owners, developers and investors in hotels to attend, then everyone who wants to do business with them will follow,” said Lee. “The franchisors, lenders, architects, contractors, attorneys—they’ll all show up.”
What Bob said he loves most about the attendees at his conference is that they are engaged.
“Our attendees want the education,” he said. “The topics are timely and relevant, and they’ll even stop mid-conversation to make sure they don’t miss a session. That’s the level of engagement we’re seeing.”
Teague summed up the approach to the conference’s content: “We think of ourselves as a hotel conference for hoteliers, by hoteliers. It’s not just about having a talking head, but someone who’s in the trenches and someone the attendees trust and respect.”
As Lee, now chairman of the conference, added, “When I call people for the conference, it’s a different conversation. I’m not calling as a conference producer; I’m calling as a friend. These are people we’ve known for years.”
Lee Hunter at the 2012 Conference
The future
Teague is excited about the growth that Hunter Hotel Advisors has seen in the last few years and expects it to continue. With eight offices and a team of 30 employees, he is confident that the company’s approach—centered around collaboration and a family-like atmosphere—sets it apart from others in the industry. This internal chemistry, he notes, is something the team carefully cultivates to maintain a strong, unified culture as they grow.
“We’re doing more than 100 deals a year,” he said. “We are doing more than a billion dollars in transaction volume. We did $2.5 billion in deals in 2022 with 175 deals. We work with all the biggest players like Blackstone, Starwood and Brookfield. We are their go-to broker in the space because we are different. We can throw an army of resources on anything, and the big guys know it.”
Teague and Lee credit their father with building something—both the brokerage and the conference—that makes it easy for them to grow.
“The real hard part is starting a company and a conference,” said Teague. “Maybe it is underselling ourselves, but it is easy for Lee and me to grow what he started. We have gone from good to great. I would have never started a company. Bob had to start it.”
He likened his father’s early struggles with that of many in the industry.
“The first five to 10 years of struggling and not knowing if you are going to survive or not or whether you are going to be able to pay your bills, that is the real struggle,” he said. “That’s the same with our industry, and all the first-generation hoteliers that are in this.”
All three that the successes that they have had would not have been possible without Becky Hunter, Bob’s wife and Teague and Lee’s mother.
“I know it’s a dad and two sons, but when dad was starting the business, it wasn’t easy,” said Teague. “And mom, in the ’70s, being a woman at that time, had to go back to work to pay the mortgage and cover the family’s bills because her crazy husband was trying to start a new real estate startup. Lee and I grew up with a mom who worked for IBM for 30 years as an executive, doing whatever it took so the family could survive. That’s an important part of the story.”
A legacy
Bob said that a satisfying thing for him at recent conferences is when a second- or third-generation hotelier comes up and tells him he sold the hotelier’s father or grandfather his first hotel.
“They’ll tell family stories about traveling around,” he said. “We would get in the car and drive around hundreds of miles, and they would say, ‘That hotel looks nice,’ and I would knock on the door and say, ‘I have a buyer who is interested in your hotel.’”
Having had a long career in hospitality, Bob sometimes gets retrospective.
“It is the people,” he said. “There have been some really interesting, fun and smart, but mostly outgoing, folks who were risk takers, and the kind of folks you enjoyed being around and doing business with. The biggest strength of our industry is our people.
“We as an industry have changed tremendously during my many years, whatever it’s been,” he added. “It is much more common and easy to travel, and there are so many choices hotel-wise. The attitude of everybody is, ‘Yeah, let’s go for the weekend.’ We’ll jump on a plane and fly and stay in a hotel and have good time. It used to be, it was a big deal. You planned a long time in advance. Business didn’t travel as much, but our industry has grown and adapted with the American lifestyle.”
1989:
The first Hotel/Motel Investors Conference was held Feb. 26–28, bringing together a total of 92 attendees.
1996:
In the same year the Olympics were held in Atlanta, the Eighth Annual Hotel/Motel Owners & Investors Conference brought in attendees from Ontario, Canada. They were the event’s first international attendees.
2009:
The conference is held as Hunter Hotel Investment Conference for the first time. The conference venue is also changed to its current home, the Atlanta Marriott Marquis. The first Hunter Conference award is presented.
2015:
The 27th Hunter Hotel Investment Conference brings in more than a thousand attendees for the first time in its history.
2016:
The Bharat Shah Leadership Speaker Series joins the 28th Hunter Hotel Investment Conference (founded at Georgia State University, the Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration).
2021:
The 32nd Hunter Hotel Investment Conference returns following the pandemic.
2023:
The 34th Hunter Hotel Investment Conference attracts over two thousand attendees.
2024:
The 35th Hunter Hotel Investment Conference features a record-breaking speaker diversity of 51%.
