Longtime hotel and hospitality brokerage leader Dan Peek is joining brokerage JLL's Americas team, where he will co-lead its hotel and hospitality practice with current CEO Kevin Davis.
Peek joins the company as president of JLL Americas Hotels & Hospitality after a five-year stint as president and chief operating officer at Hodges Ward Elliott. Prior to that role, Peek served as senior managing director and head of hospitality at HFF, a firm that has since been bought by JLL.
"I had the privilege of starting the HFF hotel business 17 years ago, and HFF and JLL merged in 2019. So, in a sense, it's a bit of a homecoming," Peek said. "While Kevin and I never had the privilege of working together, within that broader capital markets team there are people that were my friends and partners for a long time. So being able to plug into a global hospitality platform is exciting."
In a joint interview with Hotel News Now, Peek and Davis said they have complementary backgrounds and skill sets that will help boost the company's aggressive growth plans heading into 2025.
"We are partners in this business, and we are going to jointly lead the effort," Davis said. "I would say that more of my professional background has been on the financing side, where more of Dan's professional background has been on the investment sales side. While we will each do some of the other, I do think that's where the complementary nature comes into play. It's symbiotic with the skill sets that we both bring to the table."
Peek agreed.
"While we have complementary skill sets, I think we have a similar view of the world and a similar view of building and growing a team, which I think is incredibly important in our business," he said.
Global business
Peek added that because JLL is a global business that "requires a lot of time and energy to level and develop relationships with our clients," it will be useful to have a co-leadership step up to help divide and conquer the internal tasks of building out a successful team and the external growth goals of the company.
Both Peek and Davis said growing the JLL hospitality team will be a key goal heading into 2025, headlined by both Peek's joining the team and by the recent hire of Tony Muscio to serve as senior managing director for the western U.S. Muscio had previously worked at JLL but more recently comes from KBC Advisors.
Davis said JLL added five new team members over a two-week span, including Peek and Muscio.
Peek said he looks forward to building out the team and working in a mentorship role to younger members after years of operating as a "player coach."
"That's what gets me excited every day," he said. "Where's the opportunity for these people to take a step forward? We really need people that are long-term committed to our business, so to me, that's the exciting part."
Built into JLL's growth plans is an acceleration in the deals market in 2025, Peek said.
"We're pretty bullish about 2025 forward," he said. "On top of everything else, there's a lot of pent-up demand to trade. We've had a number of these disruptions. When you think about [the Great Recession], when you think about COVID, when you think about the interest rates and inflation, the kind of spike that we're in the middle of. We've had three disruptions of a normal transactions cycle. The bulk of hotels are five- to seven-year holds ... and that's sort of been postponed. So I think there's pent-up demand for sellers to transact when they can," he said.
Davis agrees with Peek's optimism for a more active transactions environment, and he said it will be fueled in part by a rebound in select-service portfolio deals.
"We've actually built an incredibly strong select-service team that are doing individual deals today, but that are well-positioned to do portfolio deals tomorrow, whether tomorrow is mid '25 or late '25, I think it's coming," he said. "So that's another place where we see a tremendous amount of opportunity."
Peek's previous five years at the helm of Hodges Ward Elliott coincide with unique period for both that company and the broader hotel industry. In addition with coping with the COVID-19 pandemic just a year after joining the company, Mark Elliott, partner at Hodges Ward Elliott who'd been the face of the company in the hotel industry for nearly 40 years, died.
"Having the opportunity to work with Bill Hodges and Mark Elliott for even a limited amount of time was a blessing and a great opportunity for me to learn and grow and further my career," Peek said, highlighting he was proud of the strong deals activity they had at the company despite those hurdles. "Great people and a great family."
Peek said he now views his role at JLL as "maybe the last step in my career" and believes the experiences of the last half decade leave him poised for success.
"It was not for the junior varsity," he said. "You had to get up and play every single day. Put your chin strap on and get out there."