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Non-Tech : Suburban Lodges of America (SLAM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alexander Hardin who wrote (16)	2/12/1998 11:07:00 AM
From: sds	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35

Atlanta should be a temporary issue... From the very few conversations I've had with mgmt, their cluster around Atlanta came from two causes -- first, that's "home", and secondly, they wanted to capture income from the Olympics (which they did quite successfully). The co. is building new units all over the place now and is trying hard to get out of the South. It takes time, though. This company is (I think) about four or five years old (at least in its current format), so I do think they deserve a little break -- it takes time to build out nationally and they are on their way to doing that. I really don't think you will see a lot of competitors rushing into the economy-priced market. Why should they when they can capture higher priced clients? As for larger competitors... if you were going to get into this market, would you rather take all of the risk and spend the time to do a build-out? No, you wouldn't -- you'd try to buy pre-existing units. I'm not saying SLAM should be looked at as an accquistion play, but its foolish to deny the possibility. The other thing is, future competitors are the boogymen of Wall St. - they scare everybody, but usually aren't real. When someone has a chain of economy priced extended stay hotels (or at least a credible plan of action), then I'll worry. There isn't a single small company in the US that doesn't operate under the threat of competition. Frankly, I think that if competition ever emerges, SLAM will beat them. I'm not at all big on ESA -- there performance has been erratic and I've heard they've had difficulties in maintaining their pricing. To each his own, though. sds