Mixed-Asset Portfolio Optimization with Private and Public Hotel Real Estate

Abstract: There has been a renewed interest by international institutional investors in the US hotel property market and increased interest in Real Estate Investment Trusts. One challenge these investors face is if it is feasible to simultaneously invest in a specific property type, both privately and publicly. In order to determine if their portfolios would benefit from the inclusion of private and public hotel real estate investors will have to carefully take into consideration: expectations for returns, tolerance for risk, allocation of assets, and the correlations between the assets. This study analyzed the performance of simulated mixed-asset portfolios using average annual returns from 1994 to 2012. The portfolios were constructed by using modern portfolio theory. The purpose was to analyze whether the inclusion of privately owned US hotel real estate and publicly traded US hotel real estate in a mixed-asset portfolio enhances the portfolio frontier. The results showed: the separate inclusion of private hotel real estate enhanced the frontier, the separate inclusion of public hotel real estate did not enhance the frontier, and the simultaneous inclusion of both private and public hotel real estate enhanced the frontier.