Hotel Feasibility Study in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL Metro Area

Twelfth of 807 areas, led by a development company

Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater's hotel and motel file runs to 103 loans and $248.5 million gross across FY2017 to FY2026, which places the area 12th of 807 for the class. Inside the area hotels and motels rank ninth of 39 classes. At 0.79x, the location quotient marks lodging as a thinner slice of Gulf Coast lending than of the national total. A $2.2 million median, 1.03x the national level, anchors the file, and the middle loans run from $1.1 million up to $3.8 million.

Program use is almost evenly divided, with 54 loans under SBA 504 and 49 under SBA 7(a), which is typical of lodging, where the property is the loan. Franchise flags appear on 51.5% of loans. Pinellas County has 51 of the loans and Hillsborough County 32.

Who holds hotel paper here

The 504 holders matter most. Florida First Capital Finance Corporation, Inc. holds 29 loans worth $68.8 million, and Florida Business Development Corporation 13 worth $45.0 million. On the 7(a) side, BayFirst National Bank holds 6 loans worth $13.5 million, PromiseOne Bank 5 worth $11.0 million and The MINT National Bank 5 worth $7.3 million. These loans are very large for their count. The lists show holdings in SBA's current records and no lender requirement.

At minimum 8.0% of approvals across FY2017 through FY2024 were cancelled. Tampa Bay has no released cancellation ceiling and no released loss rate so far; blank here means unreleased, never zero. Yearly approvals were 23 in FY2017, worth $49.4 million, and fell to 5 in FY2023 and 6 in each of FY2020, FY2024 and FY2025, before rising to 9 in FY2026, worth $24.2 million.

Tampa Bay lodging: the questions a study must answer

Demand comes first in any hotel study. It tests occupancy and average daily rate by season against the supply of comparable rooms, the pull of the airport, the beaches, the convention and sports venues, and the effect of new rooms under construction. Costs include the franchisor's property improvement plan, furniture and fixtures, and insurance and flood exposure on the coast, which are major lines. Debt service coverage should hold at a stressed occupancy; and the appraisal should split the real estate from the going business, because a hotel's value leans on its brand and operator. One data limit applies: the industry entry for hotels and motels is a single one, so limited-service properties cannot be told from full-service ones. Pinellas and Hillsborough counts include only loans whose county matched the July 2023 list.