American Hospitality Properties REIT Inc. and 15 affiliated companies filed separate Chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions on Sunday, October 4, 2026, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas, listing Marriott International as an unsecured creditor owed roughly $1.94 million in franchise fees and Hilton Hotels Corporation owed about $191,364. The filings estimated the lead company's assets at between $0 and $50,000, against liabilities of between $1,000,001 and $10 million.
The petitions were filed as active, voluntary Chapter 11 cases, according to whatnow.com, which reviewed PACER court records. Alan Tantleff, the company's chief restructuring officer, signed the petition, the same records show. Notably, the filings did not indicate that either Marriott or Hilton owns American Hospitality Properties REIT — the two hotel giants appear only as creditors owed franchise fees, not as parent companies. As Cleveland.com reported, the REITs own hotels operating under both the Hilton and Marriott brands.
A Manager Cut Loose Months Before the Filing
The bankruptcy follows a messy split between the REITs and their former external manager, Phoenix American Hospitality LLC. Both REITs terminated their management agreements with the firm effective May 20, 2026, the same whatnow.com report notes, months before Sunday's court filings. Phoenix American Hospitality had built the REITs' hotel portfolio years earlier, including a 2017 deal in which it purchased seven upscale select-service hotels across Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida for $109 million, according to hotel-online.com.
That acquisition added one Hilton property and six Marriott properties totaling 778 rooms, per the same hotel-online.com report, folding in properties like the TownePlace Suites Fayetteville North/Springdale, the Fairfield Inn & Suites Jonesboro and the TownePlace Suites New Orleans Metairie into the portfolio. The affiliated legal entities, not the hotel brands or property names, were named as debtors in Sunday's bankruptcy filings, underscoring how far the REITs' footprint had spread across the Sun Belt before the money troubles surfaced.
SEC Had Already Accused the Former Manager of Misleading Investors
The REITs' bankruptcy filings come against the backdrop of a separate Securities and Exchange Commission case involving Phoenix American Hospitality. The SEC alleged that Phoenix American Hospitality and its leadership raised approximately $86 million from more than 2,000 retail investors while providing misleading information about the company's hotel holdings and profitability, per the whatnow.com account. The firm and its president agreed to settle the matter without admitting or denying the SEC's claims, with proposed payments of $591,127 by the company and $118,225 by its president, the report states. The dossier evidence does not establish that the SEC matter caused the Chapter 11 filings, and the current status of that proposed settlement has not been independently confirmed.
The SEC's complaint describes Phoenix American Hospitality LLC as a Delaware limited liability company based in Dallas that manages investment vehicles investing in U.S.-based hotels, according to the agency's own filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Part of a Broader Wave of Hotel Bankruptcies
The filing lands amid a string of hotel bankruptcies nationally. The Sheraton Raleigh Hotel in North Carolina filed for Chapter 11 protection last month, seeking to restructure with debts and liabilities estimated between $1 million and $10 million, according to a report from finance.yahoo.com. That Raleigh property sold to Indiana-based White Lodging for $27.78 million in March, a steep drop from the $47.85 million it fetched in 2015 — a sign of how much value some hotel assets have shed in recent years.
