A U.S. map on the wall of Sunil Tolani’s office in Fullerton is dotted with pushpins marking the hotels his company owns and operates.
Expect more pins this year, with Tolani’s Prince Organization poised to strike more hotel deals.
Tolani, who goes by “Sunny,” launched Prince in 2007. It now has a portfolio of more than a dozen hotels in Colorado, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi that operate under the Holiday Inn Express, Hampton Inn & Suites, and Hilton Garden Inn brands.
Prince has more than 400 employees, including seven who work out of the company’s Fullerton headquarters, overseeing an operation with more than $25 million in annual revenue.
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Tolani hopes to do more than grow his company’s size this year. He also aims to grow its reputation, with a goal of making all of his hotels “award-winning” properties.
And he’s in a hurry.
“Every morning I look at that map, and every night I look at it,” said Tolani, who was one of five honorees at the Business Journal’s 13th annual Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards luncheon March 18 at the Hotel Irvine Jamboree Center (see related stories, page 1, 4, 8 and 10).
“I used to buy one [hotel] at a time,” he said. “Now I buy three, four or five at a time.”
He’s currently in negotiations for two more hotels in Texas, along with one each in Colorado and Louisiana. Tolani also is looking into New Mexico, Utah, Georgia, Miami and New York.
Then there’s a proposal to develop a hotel with more than 500 rooms near L.A. Live and the Staples Center in Downtown Los Angeles.
Tolani said he’s currently in the middle of negotiating that deal, his first as a developer.
That project would likely open in 2017 if it goes through.
“That downtown area has that magnetism,” Tolani said. “I have this map of the L.A. skyline, and I want to see my hotel on that skyline and stand on top of it and look (out) from the top,” he said. “That’s the American dream.”
It’s the dream that brought Tolani to the U.S. from his native Mumbai, India, in 1993. He had little more than a few personal possessions when his uncle picked him up at Los Angeles International Airport.
First Job
His first job was at Rajcomp Technologies Inc. in Yorba Linda, where Tolani still resides with his wife, Neelam Tolani, and sons Krish and Aryan Tolani. Rajcomp today operates as Anaheim-based Digital Peripheral Solutions Inc., a surveillance equipment seller. Tolani worked in Rajcomp’s warehouse as a driver during the day. Nights he worked as a gas station attendant.
Tolani bought 80% of a small Fullerton-based chipmaker company, Memory Card International Inc., in 2000, a stake he still holds.
Tolani later got into real estate, investing in homes between 2003 and 2005 until the housing market began to sour.
“I did not do anything pretty much for [all of] 2006,” Tolani said. “I was sitting around idling, thinking about buying a McDonald’s, thinking about buying a sub place, a Burger King. But my heart was not into it. I was just not feeling right about it.”
Tolani went to his uncle, Ashok Israni, and told him he was unsure of what to do next. Israni is chairman and principal of San Diego-based real estate investment company Pacifica Cos. He gave Tolani the inspiration to get into the hotel business.
He made his first purchase in 2007 with a bank loan and personal savings, acquiring the 59-room Holiday Inn Express in La Junta, Colo. The property had a 67% occupancy and $81 average daily rate at the time of the purchase. Today it operates at 76% occupancy and a $105 average daily rate, following renovations that included new signage and upgraded guest rooms.
Inspiration for the company’s name came from a trip Tolani and his wife took to Hawaii, where the two stayed at the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel.
“Hapuna Prince Hotel stood out in my mind, and I was just dreaming about it and said, ‘One day I will have a collection of hotels across America,’ ” he said.
