Eighteen years ago when Paul Sistare left the comfortable confines of Colorado to start a hotel company in Brazil, he said friends and family were questioning his sanity. On Friday, the questions were laid to rest once and for all when he sold his Atlantica Hotels International, now the largest privately held hotel company in Brazil, to U.S. investment groups Soros Fund Management and Tao Capital Partners through a recapitalization.
Sistare will remain as president and CEO while Doug Geoga, a former CEO with Hyatt who Sistare has known for some 35 years, has joined the investor group and will become Atlantica’s new chairman to assist the company’s ongoing expansion.
“Here we are now as the largest privately held hotel company in South America with just over 5,500 dedicated and committed staff members changing the way hospitality is perceived in the southern hemisphere,” Sistare told HOTELS on Friday. “I would say that after working with this buyer group for over a year, the latter is part of what attracted them to us.”
Sistare added, “We have worked diligently to establish ourselves as the most sophisticated and effective hotel operator in Brazil, and we strongly believe that as the lodging industry in Brazil continues to grow and evolve, our status as the operator of choice will become even more prominent.”
While Sistare could not comment about the amount of money injected into Atlantica by its new investors, he said the capital is not required for growth. Currently Atlantica has 42 hotels representing 7,270 rooms under construction to be opened in the next 36 months and another 33 hotels with 5,898 rooms under development, which have already been contracted. Add that to the 85 hotels with 14,033 rooms already open in 43 cities in Brazil.
“In addition to our continued and unprecedented development growth here in Brazil, we are also quite proud of our 14% growth in systemwide revenues and a year-to-date growth of 9% in RevPAR in our managed hotels,” Sistare said.
Sistare said Atlantica is particularly sensitive to its social initiative, Childhood Brasil, dedicated to the fight against sexual exploitation and abuse of children and adolescents. In the past five years, Atlantica has raised more than US$2 million for that cause.