HOTEL REAL ESTATE
Pulling Back the Curtain: Demystifying Hotel Real Estate
Back to School Special - $495.00 - save $200 for September sign ups!
Unlock the investor’s perspective on hotels and drive asset‑level NOI
What will you gain by taking this course?
Speak with confidence in ownership-level conversations
Whether you're a Revenue Manager or Commercial Leader, you'll move beyond RevPAR and ADR—and into strategic discussions on NOI, cap rate, debt yield, IRR, renovations, refinancing, and feasibility.
See hotels from the owner’s—and investor’s—perspective
From financing structures and capital stacks to brand PIPs and market analysis, you’ll learn the strategic lens owners use when buying, selling, or financing a property.
Position yourself as a true strategic partner
Designed for GMs, Regional Commercial Leads, Revenue Managers, and Emerging Asset Managers, this course empowers you to move from operational roles into trusted advisor and leadership positions.
Prepare for—and potentially launch—a hospitality real estate career
Explore the strategic, analytical, and communication skills needed to become a hotel asset manager, acquisition analyst, or other roles that bridge ownership and operations. You’ll understand:
How to monitor and maximise financial performance 
How to manage CapEx, contract negotiations, and risk
How to build a career path that combines operations savvy with real estate fluency.
Learn from real-world experts—not just textbook theory
Led by course authors Bernie Murphy and Debbie Feldman, who together bring decades of hotel investment, development, and asset management experience—and featuring practical insights from industry icons like Tom Corcoran, Robert Wiemer, and Ross Bierkan.
Also included in the course are these two resources – a 21 page glossary of hotel real estate specific terms and definitions as well as some takeaways nuggets to make it easier to think like a hotel owner.
For the month of September, we are offering this course at $495 instead of our regular price of $695. That is a $200 savings – but only if you act soon. In October, the deal will be over.
What is in the new online course?
The unique role of real estate in the hotel sector.
This brand new online course is designed to provide you with a comprehensive, real-world introduction to hotel real estate as an investment option.
Whether you are new to the hotel industry or looking to expand your investment portfolio, this course will guide you through the intricacies of hotel real estate, offering valuable insights and practical knowledge.
Eight hours of self paced, online content including videos, insights, resources and an optional 30 minutes one on one session with one of the facilitators. You can also complete the 35 question challenge at the end to qualify for our certificate of completion!
Normally priced at $695 - you can purchase at our Back to School Special price of $495 through September!
Click play above to learn more about the class.
Bernie Murphy
Principal, Cloverleaf Advisors
meet your instructor
Bernie Murphy brings a unique experiential combination of hotel operations, hotel real estate investment banking and third-party hotel management, strategic planning and hotel acquisitions across a successful career spanning over four decades.
Mr. Murphy offers clients an industry-specific skill set portfolio rarely matched in the hotel space.
He began his hotel career with Guest Quarters Suite Hotels/DoubleTree Hotels, rising from hotel General Manager to Vice President of Real Estate, assisting General Electric Pension Trust in a successful IPO of DoubleTree Hotels in 1994.
Mr. Murphy then joined The Plasencia Group, a boutique hotel investment banking firm, as Senior Vice President. During his more than twelve-year tenure at TPG, he successfully completed over $1.75 Billion in hotel transactions and advisory assignments.
Mr. Murphy subsequently joined Davidson Hotels & Resorts as Senior Vice President – Business Development, charged with growing the fee-based third-party management platform for the company. During his tenure, Davidson’s managed hotel portfolio more than doubled and company revenues grew from roughly $480 million to over $1.0 Billion.
In 2021, Murphy formed Cloverleaf-Venture LLC to provide much needed post-pandemic advisory services to hospitality clients nationwide.
Mr. Murphy is a graduate of The University of Virginia where he earned a BA in Economics and the University of Maryland where he earned an MBA. He spent 16 wonderful years in Encinitas, California and now resides in Decatur, GA with his amazing wife and two kinda amazing cats and one dog.
What Will You Learn? Here is Our Course Outline (click the + to see more)
Module One - Hotel Real Estate Overview
You will gain insights into the critical role real estate plays in the hotel business, understand the different types of hotel investors, and examine the key reasons why hotel real estate is an attractive investment option. By the end of this module, you will have a solid grasp of why hotels are considered a distinct and potentially lucrative asset class in the world of real estate investment.
We will also get you started with a short video outlining key terms in hotel real estate, what they mean and why they matter.
Module Two - Hotel Brands
Time for a little history! Take a walk with us down the beginning of the hotel industry. See where we’ve been and exactly how this impacts hotel real estate today. If you are new to hotels, you may learn some things that might be helpful. If you are a seasoned hotelier, I bet you still find a few things you didn’t know before.
Module Three - Hotel Types and Why They Matter
What distinguishes a hotel “type”? As part of your investment analyses, you should have a working knowledge of the various hotel types and what investors might be attracted to such hotel type. For instance, an opportunistic investor is not likely to be attracted to a full service branded hotel with only moderate upside appreciation potential.
And as a bonus, we have added an interview with Tom Corcoran, hotel development icon, near the end of this module because Tom knows a little something about hotel brands, customer segments and buying and selling hotels!
Module Four - Financing Hotel Real Estate
This module is one of our more complex, and we will begin by discussing the reasons to borrow and then we will move in to what you should consider when searching for a lender. We will take a look at various sources of capital available and we will wrap up with loan types – and what you will need to qualify. At the end, you will find a few case studies that will bring our theories into practice.
Also in this module you will see our interview with industry icon Robert Wiemer – Senior Managing Director for the Plascencia Group.
Module Five - Market Analysis and Feasibility
Now for the fun stuff! In this module, we are going to cover the market and feasibility of a hotel deal. We will start with a big picture – the data you will need to gather to help you determine whether or not this deal is worth your time for a full feasibility study. Then we are going to walk you through a back-of-the-envelope assessment you can do to help you quickly determine if this deal might be worth your most valuable asset – your time. We will provide you with a walk-through of our Rubik’s Cube decision tree.
We have added a bonus explainer video here – understanding IRR. If you have ever wondered how to calculate it – and why, we will show you how.
Module Six - Hotel Brand and Third Party Management
We shared a little about hotel brands in an earlier module, but now we want to do a little deeper dive into hotel management. We will start off with an introduction into the unique options that hotel owners have when determining who will manage their asset. You will learn how a brand choice impacts the value of a hotel and look at all of the licensing agreement ins and outs.
Module Seven - Hotel Real Estate Transactions
In this module we will delve into the details of hotels sales and acquisitions. We’ll begin with types of hotel acquisitions or capital events that exist and why, then we will move into seller motivations – why might they want to sell? We will walk you through the different types of hotel sales and finally we will share the actual steps process.
And as a bonus for this module, make sure to watch the conversation with icon Ross Bierkan, the cofounder of RLJ Development.
Wrap Up and Certificate Questions
In our final section we will wrap up the course with an optional 35 question challenge exam. Pass it and receive your Hotel Real Estate Certificate! You worked hard to learn this info, and you will leave with proof of your efforts!
Get some practical knowledge from three hotel real estate icons - Robert Wiemer, Tom Corcoran and Ross Bierkan. Between them they have done billions in hotel real estate transactions and they are sharing their insights with our students. See a snippet below with Tom Corcoran.
who should take
this course?
Hospitality Leaders who want to eventually work in the hotel real estate development area – or anyone who is interested in understanding hotel owners and investors.
- Revenue Strategy Leaders
- Commercial Leaders
- Asset Managers
- Sales Leaders
- General Managers
- Operations Managers
- Regional Managers
- Hospitality Vendors
- Hospitality Students