Condo Hotels

BusinessWeek: When Keith and Kimberly Hartke heard that the Fontainebleau Resort in Miami Beach was building a new condominium tower, they were ready to buy, quickly plunking down $600,000 for a 1,000-square-foot one-bedroom unit. Keith had vacationed at the hotel as a child and returned as a newlywed with Kimberly years later. But what sold the Hartkes on investing in a property wasn’t their history with the resort. It was the fact that they could rent the unit out like a hotel room when they weren’t using it. “It’s not just a condo at the beach,” Kimberly says. “We’re getting in the hotel business.”
The Hartkes are charter members of the latest trend to hit the hospitality industry: the condo hotel. By uniting the public’s desire to invest in real estate with the travel industry’s quest for new properties, the condo hotel has reinvigorated the hotel construction business and begun altering the skyline of cities such as Miami and Las Vegas.
Checking Out — and Into — Condo Hotels [BusinessWeek]