Spotlight on: Darcy L. Coleman, Vice President at Alagem Capital Group

The Long View: Hospitality and the Future of Cities

Darcy L. Coleman, Vice President at Alagem Capital Group, brings an owner-side perspective to the evolving intersection of hospitality, tourism, urban development, and the market headwinds impacting the future of global destinations.

There is a version of a conversation with Darcy L. Coleman that stays squarely in the world of yield, RevPAR, and cost of capital. She is fluent in all of it. As Vice President of Asset and Investment Management at Alagem Capital Group, she oversees a portfolio of luxury hospitality properties and brings the kind of institutional knowledge that comes only from years of working across both the transactional and operational sides of the business.

But Coleman does not stay in that lane for long. Ask her about Los Angeles, and the conversation expands. She talks about small business owners, gig workers, housing affordability, capital markets redlining entire cities, and the cost to communities when visitors don't return. Tourism data is always there and so is the bigger picture.

It is exactly that perspective that makes Darcy's addition to the International Luxury Hotel Association Advisory Council so well-timed.

A City at a Crossroads

Los Angeles is entering what Coleman describes as a defining moment. The convergence of hospitality real estate, sports and entertainment, long talked about as an abstract opportunity, is now a practical reality that operators and investors have to navigate in real time.

"When people come to Los Angeles, they want to experience an activated destination hub," she explains. "And this visitor economy is what supports local business and communities including residents who benefit from people who visit, spend and return."

That returning visitor is the metric she keeps coming back to, and it is not purely a hospitality metric. It is a civic one. When cities are clean, safe, activated and economically diverse, people come back. When they are not, no amount of excellent service inside the hotel walls can compensate.

On the subject of the World Cup, Coleman is measured but candid. The excitement is real and so is the concern. Ticket prices are high, the cost of visiting Los Angeles remains steep, and there are genuine questions about whether the anticipated revenue surge will materialize.

"We have to think about this not just in the short term of major games, but in the long term," she says. "When people come here, are they going to have a great experience, and will they return to their homes sharing good memories? We care about our guests, not just because of big events but all the other things that happen when people come to our City for business or leisure travel."

The Cost of Doing Business

Coleman is direct about the development and operational costs and regulatory environment in Los Angeles. The hotel industry, she notes, has not recovered to 2019 numbers. Layer onto that a proposed increase in Transient Occupancy Tax, rising fixed expenses, and a capital markets landscape that has, in her words, effectively redlined the city, and the challenge becomes clear.

"There is a cumulative layering of costs, regulations, fees and taxes that have escalated over the years," she says. "Making it harder to invest in Los Angeles." The solution, as she sees it, is not adversarial but collaborative, with private sector leaders engaging directly with policymakers to inform decisions before they are made, not after.

Beyond the Portfolio

Coleman sits on the advisory board of the Urban Land Institute of Los Angeles chapter, where she is the founding Chair of the Hospitality and Entertainment Development Council and Co-Chair of the Homelessness Initiative Council. To some in the industry, those might seem like separate lanes. To Coleman, they are the same road.

"Luxury is not just for an elite class anymore," she observes. "Travelers today are more sophisticated. They plan and save for curated experiences, and share those moments on social media with followers. Which means the overall experience, the city outside the hotel doors, matters to our guests." She makes the case plainly: you cannot put a band-aid on homelessness, you have to address it and find ways to prevent it. Housing affordability and homelessness are not only social issues adjacent to commercial real estate; they are issues impacting communities and the broader built environment.

At the center of her perspective are the residents, those who operate hotels and entertainment venues, and the business community that give Los Angeles its energy and sense of place. Hospitality and tourism, she notes, are major contributors to the Los Angeles economy and California's GDP, highlighting the city's position as a global destination. The long-term health and competitiveness of the industry is directly tied to the people, businesses, and communities that make the city function.

Travel as a Tool

Coleman travels with what she calls a dual prism: part guest and part analyst. She observes people in hotel lobbies the way others might review a report. What do they like? What frustrates them? What would make them come back?

That input feeds directly into how Alagem Capital evaluates acquisitions and repositioning opportunities. Right now, the value-add sector in hotel development is where she sees the most activity, hotels being acquired, renovated, and repositioned with mixed-use components, retail and dining, designed to function as destination hubs rather than places to sleep.

"Challenge breeds innovation," Coleman says. "That is the great thing about the hospitality market and real estate as a whole. We have gone through so many cycles, and it really informs how we lead, how we make deals, and the relationship we build along the way."

Welcome to the ILHA Advisory Council

The ILHA community is built around people who think this way, leaders who understand that the future of luxury hospitality is not just about what happens inside a property, but about the ecosystems that make great properties possible. Darcy L. Coleman thinks across all of it: investment fundamentals, policy, community, culture, and the lived experience of guests.