480-861-0614
Profile | hotel & resort consulting services. |
☎ 480-585-1925 ☎ 480-585-1925
Hotel & Resort Advisory Group
 | Resort Advisory Group International in Scottsdale, AZwas founded by Mr. Alain Longatte. The firm's principals include Mr. Longatte, Mr. Michel Bendeck, and Mr. Jason Bass, CPA, CFA. Mr. Longatte has held senior management positions for almost 35 years in real estate finance, operations, and development. Mr. Bass is an economist and financial analyst. He is a CPA in California and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. He has over 25 years of economic and financial analysis experience, covering a broad range of industries, including, in particular, real estate. Mr. Bendeck has been involved in virtually every aspect of the hotel industry, including operations, development, finance, and |
Please click the links below for a detailed description of Mr. Longatte's, Mr. Bass', and Mr. Bendeck's professional and educational backgrounds:
As the founder and President of Resort Advisory Group International, Mr. Longatte has played a key advisory role on a range of engagements, most notably, the development of a luxury hotel and residences in Telluride, Colorado; the proposed development of a luxury resort in Calistoga California; several luxury resort development proposals in and around Lake Tahoe, California; the proposed development of mixed-use hospitality/residential beachside in Mexico; and the redevelopment and repositioning of a condo-hotel with golf in Longboat Key Florida.
For the Telluride engagement as an example, working very closely with the developer Mr. Longatte shepherded the project through from its concept stage to near ground-break in just over a year. His ongoing contribution has not only included close oversight of the project's land planning, architectural and interior design team but he has also served as the principal negotiator in securing a favorable deal with the hotel operator for branding and management of the property and has directed broad-reaching efforts to secure debt financing for the deal.
Before he established Resort Advisory Group International, Mr. Longatte was President of Botany Bay Partners, LLC, a startup 400-acre luxury real estate development on the island of St. Thomas, USVI, and President of Las Campanas in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a 4,800-acre up-scale resort residential development project. Prior to entering the real estate development field, Mr. Longatte spent seven years with Heitman Financial, LTD as CEO and President of the firm's Hotel Properties division. In that capacity, Mr. Longatte oversaw a $750 million portfolio of hotel investments and provided the firm's numerous pension fund and private clients with a wide range of financial advisory services focusing on the acquisition and disposition of hospitality assets.
Mr. Longatte joined Heitman after serving as Managing Director of the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. As the hotel's Managing Director, he implemented a $100 million renovation and orchestrated a highly successful re-opening of the property. Before the Regent Beverly Wilshire, Mr. Longatte was General Manager for the Mayfair Regent of Chicago. His extensive hospitality operations and management expertise also include senior positions with the Registry Hotel Corp., the Meridien Hotel Corp., and Westin Hotels.
Mr. Longatte graduated from the School of Hotel administration in Paris, France. Additionally, he undertook graduate coursework at Trinity College, Dublin Ireland, the University of Maryland. He is fluent in English, French and Spanish.
Alain M. Longatte
Mr. Bass joined Resort Advisory Group International following three years with Warnick + Company, a hospitality and recreation consultancy based in Phoenix Arizona and with offices in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. His recent experience includes a range of straight consulting and litigation support activities. He has also been directly involved in performing investment underwriting, source equity, and public financing and deal structuring for the development of numerous hotels including a 175 room Hyatt House in Rochester Minnesota and a 230 room, dual-branded Marriott product just north of Monterey, CA.
While with Warnick + Company Mr. Bass was responsible for much of the firm's financial and economic research and analysis activities. His most recent project work with Warnick +Company included performance of financial and statistical analyses to calculate lost income for a condo-hotel management contract dispute and associated arbitration; development of a staffing and a financial model to be used as a tool to reprogram, reposition, and/or streamline the distressed operations of a beachside resort hotel on the Big Island of Hawaii; the assemblage of a highly flexible financial model to evaluate feasibility and financing strategies for a planned master-planned community in the Caribbean to include several hotels, multiple residential developments, a casino, marina and championship golf course; the construction of a model to evaluate alternative capital stack scenarios for the acquisition, tear down and rebuild of a luxury hotel and residences in New York City; hotel and residential development planning and financial evaluation for a beachfront parcel in Mexico; performance of due diligence for the acquisition of a hotel, restaurant and retail operation in Mexico; and redevelopment planning, positioning, and feasibility assessment for an Orlando convention hotel.
Before Warnick + Company, Mr. Bass was a consultant with Dornbusch Associates, an economic consulting firm focused on real estate, water, and natural resource development and management services. As a principal with Dornbusch, Mr. Bass performed a broad range of economic and financial analyses. Specific projects included the income-based valuation of the lodging, food & beverage, and retail concession facilities at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon; determination of the potential local economic and tax/fee benefits of the then proposed five star Montage Hotel and Residences in Beverly Hills California, which opened in late 2008; the prospective valuation of a proposed privately held mixed-use lodging, retail and entertainment complex in Tusayan, Arizona, just outside the Grand Canyon, and the monetary damages due several Indian tribes from the misappropriation of their land and water resources. For his work on the Grand Canyon valuation, Mr. Bass was designated an expert and provided several hours of direct and rebuttal testimony in an arbitration to determine the contractually required capital recovery due the concessionaire from the National Park Service at the pending end of the term of the concessionaire's contract to operate the concession (which generates approximately $70 million a year in revenues). Following that effort, he co-authored a paper regarding the methodologies employed for the valuation, which he helped to present to the Counselors of Real Estate (CREs) at their annual convention. (
www.ishc.com/library/2006/NationalParkarticle.pdf)
Mr. Bass has been designated an expert for a number of other legal matters for which he has provided written expert opinions and affidavits, been deposed, and testified in mediation, arbitration, and in court. Most recently, he testified in Federal Court on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice on a property and sales tax matter.
During a portion of his time with Dornbusch Associates, Mr. Bass also served as CFO of a high-end boutique residential and commercial property development and construction firm, Maven Properties. In that capacity, Mr. Bass was responsible for the financial components of the firm's operations. Specific duties included management of accounting systems, tax return preparation, vendor/client contracting, and real property acquisition.
Mr. Bass joined Dornbusch Associates after working for over four years as a consultant with two separate ligation support practices, first with Ernst and Young in San Francisco and then with a small firm, EconomInc in Berkeley, that eventually merged with Law and Economics Consulting Group (LECG). With both firms, Mr. Bass performed numerous and varied market, operational, and financial analyses and assisted in court to calculate or to refute monetary damages claims in mostly the banking, construction, energy, high technology, real estate, and apparel sectors.
Mr. Bass graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.Sc. in Resource Economics. He completed his Master degree in Resource Economics at the University of California at Davis with an emphasis in quantitative methods. Additionally, he has taken Ph.D. level courses in microeconomic, econometric and information economic theory at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Canada. He is a CPA, licensed in California and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) from the CFA Institute. He is proficient in French and Spanish.
Before joining Resort Advisory Group International as a principal, Michel Bendeck was president and founder of CHMC Group, Inc., a successful hospitality consulting firm established in 1986. Under his leadership, CHMC served as a consultant to many of the world’s leading hotel and real estate companies as well as private investors.
Michel has been involved in virtually every aspect of the hotel industry including operations, development, and finance and business strategy for over 30 years. Before forming CHMC Group, Michel was a senior executive with Regent International Hotels and Resorts, he was the project manager for the development of the Halekulani Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii and was the area controller for the US and Caribbean. Prior to joining Regent International Hotels and Resorts, he was the general manager of the Frankfurt Plaza Hotel, Frankfurt, West Germany and Director of the Canadian Pacific Hotel Holdings in West Germany that included the Hamburg Plaza Hotel and the Frankfurt Plaza Hotel. Michel began his career in hotel operations and held senior level management positions with Intercontinental Hotels and Canadian Pacific Hotels in Europe.
Michel has been involved in many resort and real estate developments throughout the United States, Europe, and the Far East. His clients' list includes high-end developers and investors as well as Amanresorts, were he was the project manager for the Amangani Resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Michel attended the University of Madrid, Spain and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in hotel and restaurant management. He is fluent in Spanish, French, German, Italian, and English.
Resort Advisory Group International
28150 North Alma School Pkwy
Suite 103
Scottsdale, AZ 85262