The luxury SLS Beverly Hills hotel created by hotel and nightclub mogul Sam Nazarian has been sold for $195 million to Torrance multilevel marketing and hotel firm Sunrider International, it was reported today.
Nazarian’s company SBE opened the 297-room hotel in 2008, just as the hospitality industry was going into a recession-related skid. The hotel business has since recovered and investors have snatched up high-end Southern California properties at steep prices in recent months.
Investors bought 399 California hotels for a total of $5.1 billion in 2014, a nearly threefold increase from 2009, when 92 hotels sold for a combined value of nearly $1.8 billion, according to research by Atlas Hospitality, an Irvine hotel industry consulting firm.
Nazarian said nearly a year ago that he was putting the SLS Beverly Hills up for sale as part of a strategy to reduce SBE’s holdings in real estate while expanding its contracts to manage hotels for other investors, according to The Times.
Sunrider was founded by an herbalist born in Taiwan. It makes nutritional supplements, beauty products, weight loss drinks, household cleaners and other food supplements, beauty supplies and other products distributed in more than 40 countries. It also has a hotel chain called Sunworld Dynasty that owns and operates three hotels in Beijing and Taipei.
The privately owned company also recently purchased the St. Ermin’s Hotel in London, company representative Jonathan Beutler said, according to The Times.
The SLS Beverly Hills will continue to be operated by Starwood Hotel & Resorts as an SLS hotel, Beutler said. SBE will remain the “brand operator,” he said.
SBE and co-owner CIM Group sold the SLS hotel to Sunrider last month. The 2.7-acre property is south of the Beverly Center at 435 S. La Cienega Blvd.
