Real estate investor Davonne Reaves has expanded her real estate portfolio by acquiring two more hotels with Nassau Investments. The first property is a Staybridge Suites in Fishers, Indiana, which is part of the renowned Intercontinental Hotel Group, one of the largest hotel brands in the world while the second property is a Hampton Inn & Suites in Scottsburg, Indiana.
According to Black News, the new acquisitions amount to $18 million, making Reaves now co-owner of an impressive three hotel properties in just under a year. She is the founder and chief hospitality strategist behind Atlanta-based hospitality firm, The Vonne Group.
“It’s an awesome feeling doing this as an African American woman, especially as a young African American woman,” Reaves told Black News. “For many years I never imagined that I could own a hotel and now I own three! It’s an indescribable feeling knowing that I am living my ancestors’ wildest dreams.”
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Reaves has over 15 years of experience in the hospital industry and she has helped 50 hotel investors get started and two of her protégé’s are on their way to co-owning hotel properties in 2022. The veteran hotelier said she is ready to help more people in the hotel industry.
“I’m so attracted to this industry because the hotel ownership and investment space, help create generational wealth,” said Reaves. “It really is a tool to create wealth for yourself and your family; wealth lasts for generations, riches are just for today.”
34-year-old Reaves sits on the Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration Industry Advisory Board at the Robinson College of Business at her alma mater, Georgia State University.
Reaves grew up in a working family. She majored in hospitality at Georgia State University. Becoming a hotel investor was not part of Reaves’ goals but she found herself with her childhood friend, Jessica Myers, becoming the youngest African-American woman to ever co-own a property in a major hotel chain.
Reaves and Myers formed an ownership group of mostly millennials and partnered with Nassau Investments to acquire the Home2 Suites by Hilton El Reno, Oklahoma, located about 30 miles from Oklahoma City, Black Business reported last year. The hotel deal, which hovered around $8.3 million, was a dream come true for Reaves.
“I never thought by the time I was 33 that I’d be a hotel owner, but I admit that it feels great to have accomplished that at this point in my life,” she said at the time. “Making history in the process, well that’s just icing on the cake!”
Reaves has spent a chunk of her professional career in the hospitality industry, event planning, working in restaurants, hotels, among others. In 2015, she took up a career-changing role in Boston as an associate for CHMWarnick, the largest third-party hotel asset management company in the country.
