When Hurricane Ian hit Florida’s Gulf Coast in 2022, it put two hotels operated by the same REIT out of commission for nearly a year. Recovery took twelve months and cost far more than the insurance payouts.
That experience prompted the ownership group to do something their due diligence process had never required: a comprehensive natural hazard assessment on both properties.
What they found, through work done with RiskFootprint™, led to targeted resilience retrofits costing roughly two million dollars across the two hotels. When Hurricanes Milton and Helene hit the same region in 2024, both properties stayed open. Total downtime: 72 hours.
Albert Slap, founder of RiskFootprint™, uses that example to illustrate a central problem in commercial real estate today. The tools to understand building-level risk exist. Standard due diligence processes don’t generally use them, yet.