1. travel
2. hotels

SUNDAY NEWS JOURNAL DELAWAREONLINE.COM
SUNDAY, APRIL 5, 2015
5E
Hotels
Continued from Page 1E
as two restaurants and an events venue.
A second phase of the project now underway will add another 22 hotel rooms,
10 condos and an expanded parking garage by Memorial Day, with 10 more condos set for completion after the summer.
Harvey’s partners in TKo Hospitality
are more familiar with the hotel management side of the business.
Kostas Kalogeropoulos and Vince DiFonzo each recently left top-level executive jobs with Meyer Jabara Hotels, a
Connecticut-based hospitality company
that operates 20 hotels in 10 states.
In fact, TKo Hospitality’s first move
was to take over the management of
Lighthouse Cove from their former employer.
“[Meyer Jabara] had a multi-year
contract but we bought it out because we
felt we could do a better job internally,”
Harvey said. “At the same time, Kostas
and Vince were interested in leaving and
doing something on their own, so it just
made sense.”
Now the firm is turning its attention
to constructing new hotels in the region.
“The hotel industry is finally starting
to pick back up and we think we’ve assembled a team that’s uniquely poised to
take advantage of that growth,” Harvey
said. “Our goal is to have 1,000 rooms in
our portfolio by the end of 2016 with 50 to
100 percent more by the start of 2018.”
TKo’s current slate of projects includes three upscale hotels in “a resort
community on Maryland’s Eastern
Shore” – totaling 400 rooms – and two hotels totaling 250 rooms in Pennsylvania’s
Lehigh Valley, north of Philadelphia.
DiFonza, the chief operating officer
of TKo, said the firm can’t provide any
other details about the projects due to
the non-disclosure agreements it has
with Hyatt, Marriot and Hilton Hotels &
Resorts, the chains that will be licensing
the new facilities.
“I can tell you that we plan to break
ground on three of those projects in the
late summer to early fall, with about 12 to
16 months of construction before they
open,” said the former chairman of the
Delaware Hotel and Lodging Association, who also previously served as general manager of the 266-room Hilton Wilmington/Christiana on behalf of Meyer
Jabara. “The other projects are in various stages of the approval process.”
At the same time, TKo is working to
acquire third-party management contracts with existing hotels, similar to
how it took over operations at the Hyatt
Place in Dewey Beach.
“Right now, we are in negotiations
with some Delaware hotel owners that
are interested in hiring us to manage
their properties,” DiFonza said. “Nothing has been solidified at this time, but I
think it’s safe to say we will expanding
our presence in the Delaware market at
some point.”
While TKo is looking to rapidly establish a foothold in the industry, DiFonza
said the company does not aspire to become a national-level hotelier.
“I think in the next five to six years,
we’d like to have 15 to 20 hotels in our
portfolio, not 40 to 50,” he said. “But
we’ve set these aggressive goals at the
start in order to become relevant in the
industry.”
If the firm’s planned rate of growth is
successful, TKo would stand out in Delaware, said Bill Sullivan, chairman of the
Greater Wilmington Convention & Visitors Bureau and managing director of
the Courtyard Newark at the University
JAMES FISHER/THE NEWS JOURNAL
E. Thomas Harvey, the developer behind the Lighthouse Cove Resort in Dewey Beach, has partnered with two former executives of the hotel
management company that previously operated the resort to form a new company that is building hotels in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Vince DiFonzo
Kostas Kalogeropoulos
E. Thomas Harvey
of Delaware.
“Most Delaware hospitality firms are
small, family-owned operations that
might have one or two properties,” he
said. “There aren’t a lot of big hotel management companies in Delaware at all,
really.”
Possibly the largest, Sullivan said, is
Ocean City, Maryland-based Real Hospitality, which manages nearly 50 hotels in
eight states, including four in Delaware.
The national hotel market is certainly
primed for TKo to match that size in the
coming years.
During the recession, new hotel construction stagnated while many existing
hotels closed their doors as vacationers
and business travelers curtailed their
spending habits.
Business has picked up again in recent years, but hotel rooms are not being
added fast enough to keep up with demand.
According to the industry’s leading
data provider STR Inc., the number of
hotel rooms nationwide grew by less
than 1 percent last year, while demand
jumped 4.6 percent.
As a result, national occupancy rates
are expected to hit 30-year highs in 2016.
That’s driving room rates higher and
most hotel chains are building properties as fast as they can to capitalize on
those market forces. As of February,
436,000 hotel rooms were under contract
for construction, an 18-percent increase
over 2014.
Harvey said TKo plans to take advantage of that booming growth by offering
its services to guide developers and hotel owners from architectural design
through construction and on to actual
day-to-day management.
“This is a consolidation industry and I
like being a consolidator,” he said. “Our
goal is to see what we can amass and
where that will take us. I think this is going to be a fun ride.”
Contact Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281 or sgoss@delawareonline.com. On Twitter: @ScottGossDel
DELAWARE ACHIEVERS
FINANCAL SERVICES
Joshua Shaver, a field director
at Diamond State Financial
Group in Newark, recently
received the Brian H. Early
Frontline Excellence Award from
General Agents and Managers
Association (GAMA) International. The honor recognizes
frontline and second-line managers who are a role model for
others and viewed as emerging
leaders in their companies.
Nominees must demonstrate
outstanding success in helping
to build their firm or agency
through developing, growing or
leading their units. Each company is responsible for determining
the criteria it will use to select its
nominee. Shaver was among 15
managers who accepted the
award during GAMA’s annual
conference in Washington D.C.
last month. Shaver graduated
magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in finance from the
University of Delaware.
Newark-based Sallie Mae recently announced two new appointments to its board of directors,
as well as an expansion of the
board from 11 seats to 12. The
new board members are former
congressman Jim Matheson
and Vivian C. Schneck-Last, a
former managing director at
Goldman, Sachs & Company.
From 2001 to 2015, Matheson
represented Utah in the U.S.
House of Representatives, where
he served as chief deputy whip
for the House Democratic Caucus. This year, he joined Squire
Patton Boggs as a principal in
the public policy practice. He
holds a bachelor’s degree from
Harvard University and a master’s of business administration
from UCLA Anderson School of
Management. Schneck-Last most
recently served as managing
director, global head of technology governance for Goldman
Sachs. She holds a bachelor’s
degree from Touro College and
a master’s degree in business
administration from Columbia
University. Matheson and
Schneck-Last are independent
directors who will stand for
election at the annual stockholders meeting in June.
INSURANCE
Arthur Hall Insurance recently
welcomed Josh Isler as a commercial account executive. Isler
began his career with Arthur
Hall Insurance but spent the last
eight years as an account executive with Shevland and Associates in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
He holds the insurance industry’s
premier designation from the
Certified Insurance Counselor
Society, whose members are
required to pass rigorous undergraduate and graduate-level
examinations, meet experience
requirements and agree to be
bound by a strict code of professional ethics. Isler earned bachelor’s degrees in management
and marketing from Eastern
University. He lives with his
family in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and is actively involved
with Young Life in Chester
County. Arthur Hall Insurance
has offices in West Chester,
Pennsylvania, Sparta, New Jersey
and Hockessin.
LAW
Fish & Richardson recently
received top “Band 1” designation in the United States for
its intellectual property patent
practice and its International
Trade Commission practice in
the Chambers Global 2015
rankings. The “Band 1” designation is the highest ranking
Lon M. Fluman III
Josh Isler
Joshua Shaver
Tyler Berl
possible and means Fish has
been identified as among the
world’s best law firms. A global
patent and intellectual property
law firm with offices in Wilmington, Fish has been ranked by
Corporate Counsel at the No. 1
patent litigation firm in the
United States for the last 11
years. In February, Managing
Intellectual Property magazine
also ranked Fish as the most
active law firm at the Patent
Trial and Appeal Board for 2014.
urban affairs and public policy
from the University of Delaware.
He also previously worked in the
research department at the
university’s School of Public
Policy and Administration and as
a legislative fellow in the Delaware House of Representatives.
Delaware Hospice recently
honored its New Castle County
volunteers at a recognition
luncheon at the Cavaliers Country Club in Christiana. Nearly 75
volunteers and guests attended
the event, where 48 volunteers
with at least five years of service
were recognized for their combined 505 years of tireless work.
Among them was 90-year-old
Eleanor Lewis, who will be
retiring from her volunteer
duties after 30 years of service.
Other honorees included 25-year
volunteer Marilyn Mengden,
20-year volunteers Jo-Ann
Biggs, Joe Masiello, Maryann
McConnell, Janet Richardson
and Dale Stratton, and 15-year
volunteers John Kurzenberger
and James Tucker. The event
also featured a special thank
you to the New Castle County
Festival of Trees Committee
members for their work during
the three-day event at Cokesbury Village in Hockessin. Over
the last nine years, volunteers
have helped raise more than
$1.6 million through the New
Castle County event.
nizes the top 10 teams and
individuals in terms of units and
gross commission income.
Pinnacle Award winners included Mike McCann & the
McCann Team from the Society
Hill office in Philadelphia, Robin
Gordon from the Haverford
Station office in Haverford,
Pennsylvania and Michael
Wilson from the Brandywine
office in Wilmington. Another
20 Fox & Roach agents and
teams were listed in the Top 100
in the BHHS Network.
Re/Max has ranked The Debbie
Reed Team of Re/Max Realty
Group in Rehoboth Beach as
24th in sales in the United States
and 37th among Re/Max teams
worldwide. The team also
retained its place in the real
estate franchiser’s Diamond
Award Club, which recognizes
those teams with gross commission of more than $1 million. The
rankings were revealed during
Re/Max’s annual R4 International Conference in Las Vegas.
Five agents from the Debbie
Reed team attended the conference, including team founder
and leader Debbie Reed, Ashlee
Reed Hindell, Cindy Marsh, Amy
Warick and Sherri Nowicki.
NONPROFITS
Tyler Berl was recently hired as
the new manager of the HIV/
AIDS Community Planning
process by the Delaware HIV
Consortium. His first day was
April 1. The community planning
organization is tasked with
overseeing and making recommendations to the Delaware
Division of Public Health concerning the expenditure of
federal Ryan White Title II funds,
as well as the Center for Disease
Control prevention and education grants. The community
planning agency is made up of
service and medical providers,
consumers, corporations and
other stakeholders. Berl earned
a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in
REAL ESTATE
Lon M. Fluman III recently
joined Berkshire Hathaway
HomeServices Fox & Roach
Realtors’ Newark office as a sales
associate. He previously spent 25
years managing restaurants and
holds membership in the Million
Dollar Round Table financial
professionals association. A
member of the New Castle
County Board of Realtors, he will
serve New Castle and Kent
counties. Fluman earned a
degree in business management
from Wesley College in Dover.
He lives in Townsend with his
wife, Dawn, and their six children.
Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach Realtors chairman and CEO Lawrence Flick recently announced
that the company has received
the Elite Circle Award, which is
given annually to the top 50
companies in BHHS Real Estate
Network. Fox & Roach was
ranked first in residential units
and second in gross commission
income. Three Fox & Roach sales
associates also received the
Pinnacle Award, which recog-