A 109-room Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Wilmington, North Carolina, traded for $12.95 million on Monday, deed records show. Cushman & Wakefield brokered the sale from Kismet Wilmington LLC to Savannah-area operator Ideal Hospitality.

The four-story, nearly 60,000-square-foot property at 839 Medical Center Drive operated as the Holiday Inn Express & Suites Wilmington West-Medical Park. It opened in 2019 after construction began in 2018, sits on two acres, and had been listed at $14.7 million since October 2024.

How did the deal come together?

Cushman & Wakefield hospitality brokers David Greenberg, vice chair of the firm's Hospitality Investment Sales Team, director Rick Redmond, and senior director Chris Passeggiata conducted more than 20 tours and fielded at least 10 written offers before closing.

Redmond said the buyer pool skewed Southeastern, with Northeast capital drawn by cheaper real estate.

"That continues to be something that attracts investors," Redmond said.

Passeggiata characterized Wilmington as a sought-after market where the property will serve medical, leisure, and corporate demand.

Why is Ideal Hospitality buying?

Hugh Osborne, the firm's vice president of operations, said proximity to a planned UNC hospital and adjacent development sealed the bid.

"We think it's very well positioned (in) that medical park area," Osborne said. "There's a lot of development going on — UNC's got a hospital they're planning on building. There's just a lot of growth in that area."

The acquisition deepens Ideal Hospitality's IHG exposure. The company already operates three Holiday Inn Express & Suites hotels and opened a Home2 Suites by Hilton in Wilmington's medical park in 2024 at 2177 Stonecrop Drive. It also owns a downtown site at 1 Hanover St., purchased the same year, and holds development rights for a Residence Inn by Marriott that has not yet been sited.

"There's a lot of different opportunities we're looking at," Osborne said. "We're just weighing what makes sense for us."

What changes for the property?

Osborne said Ideal Hospitality will start a soft renovation next year, meeting IHG's seven-year refresh mandate and folding in a property improvement plan the brand issues to new owners.

The deal closed roughly $1.75 million under the October 2024 ask. Redmond noted hotels as an asset class usually take close to a year to trade, a window that pushed the seller to hold the listed price through a longer-than-typical marketing cycle.

What does it mean for travel sellers?

For hotel investors and the operators who distribute rooms into corporate and medical-travel channels, the Wilmington trade signals continued appetite for select-service IHG assets in secondary Southeastern medical hubs, where anchor institutions underwrite predictable corporate and patient-room-night demand.

Looking ahead, Ideal Hospitality's broader Wilmington pipeline — anchored by the unsited Residence Inn flag — will test whether the medical-park thesis holds across brands and submarkets.