Hotel investing: one women's story.

Hotel investments, once the industry's stepchild, have enjoyed a Cinderella-like turnaround that is still playing out. After concluding one of the hottest real estate deals of the new year, Orna Shulman participated in a panel at the 9th Annual Commercial Property World Conference in New York in March. She described of a series of opportunistic and highly successful hotel transactions she concluded for Intertech Corporation, for which she is Executive Vice President.

Shulman reviewed Intertech's five-year investment strategy, which began focusing on the hotel sector in 1992, when it was the industry's most out-of-favor real estate asset class. Her anecdotal presentation, which covered the past five years, paralleled the dynamic turnaround of that sector to the exalted position it enjoys today.

In January, Intertech made headlines with the sale of HEI Hotels LLC, a Connecticut-based hotel operating company in which it holds a major interest, and the hotel properties that it owned in joint venture with PRISA II, an institutional real estate investment fund managed by Prudential Life Insurance Company.

Hospitality investments caught Shulman's eye five years ago, when she identified these assets as undervalued. She began acquiring properties and soon teamed up with Gary Mendell, president of HEI Hotels LLC, to maximize value. "At this stage, if you had access to capital and could move quickly, understanding the risks/rewards, you could do extremely well," she explained.

In May 1995, Intertech sold its hotel asset portfolio to Prudential PRISA II at a substantial profit, but decided to re-invest in the new joint venture with HEI and PRISA II, as well as acquire a 40 percent position in HEI Management. At this point, the hotel REIT market exploded and Intertech and HEI were able to capitalize on the market's rebound. In early 1997, HEI and 10 hotel properties were acquired by Starwood Lodging Trust, the nation's largest public real estate investment trust, for $327 million. The president of HEI Hotels LLC became the president of Starwood Lodging Trust.

Intertech and its affiliates are major shareholders in Starwood Lodging Trust, which it considers to be an excellent growth vehicle to seize the opportunities resulting from continued growth in the hotel sector, especially in the luxury sector.

Intertech Corporation is a private investment firm with offices in New York and Washington. Shulman has primary responsibility for the acquisition and management of Intertech's portfolio of office, retail and residential real estate, hotels and hotel management, and direct capital and venture capital investments in entertainment, technology and biotechnology.