Historic La Posada De Santa Fe hotel sells for $58 million

SANTA FE, N.M. (KRQE) – The historic La Posada De Santa Fe hotel recently sold for $58 million. The 157-room hotel has been around since 1882 and has been operating as a hotel since the 1930s, making it a staple in Santa Fe. Ashford Hospitality purchased the hotel in 2018, and now Abo Empire owns it as of last month.

Cousins Ryan Price and Trey Yates, who run Abo Empire, say the sale came at the perfect time, as the family-owned oil and gas company had just offloaded a family ranch and decided to try a hand in hospitality. “We wanted to find ways of planting those dollars back into New Mexico, and that happened to be right around the time La Posada came on the market,” Price said.

The new owners of Abo Empire are New Mexican locals. They say they have strong ties to the hotel and plan on keeping the building’s tradition alive while making some improvements.

Price and Yates say their families would choose to stay at La Posada during family vacations growing up, and Price even met his wife in the hotel lobby. “It’s always held a strong place in our hearts,” Price said.

So when making improvements, they plan on preserving the hotel’s spirit. “We feel like over the last decade, the hotel’s been underinvested in,” Yates said. “We’ll be pouring back into it and improving the hotel. There’ll be some major renovations happening for the next three years. Our goal is to keep the hotel open during a large part of this process.”

Yates says they’ll be doing the renovations strategically and upgrading each casita piece by piece throughout the process. “We’re gonna look at keeping the same type of New Mexican charm as well as bringing some things up to date,” Yates said.

Crescent Hotels and Resorts, in partnership with William Cole Companies, will manage the hotel together.