Dream Chaser: Davonne Reaves owns multiple hotels, and wants to show you how

The lobby of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta was buzzing with activity when Davonne Reaves entered through the massive glass revolving doors. She stopped to say hello to familiar faces, hugging some, and joking with others. Reaves, 36, was once one of them. At heart she still is. She started working at the 1,260-room Hyatt Regency in 2007 and a dream of wanting to one day own a hotel began. During her six-and-a-half years as an employee at the Hyatt Regency, primarily assisting guests at the front desk, Reaves picked up the necessary knowledge and insight to one day make that dream come true. 

“I just wanted to always have the top position no matter what I was going to do,” Reaves told The Atlanta Voice during a recent interview. “What’s the top position at a hotel? The owner.” 

Today Reaves owns three hotels, two in Indiana; a 145-room Staybridge Suites in Fishers and an 86-room Hampton Inn & Suites in Scottsburg; and an 85-room Home2 Suites location in El Reno, Oklahoma. Success aside, it wasn’t an easy journey to ownership. The first hotel that Reaves purchased, the Home2 Suites in Oklahoma, had to have a team effort in order to raise the capital necessary to purchase a hotel, according to Reaves. She had to go to family and friends for contributions. That experience led her to want to make the process easier for others.

A mother of a five-year-old son and published author, Reaves has managed motherhood, her career, and operating the hotels while also starting a new company that she believes will help teach others how to invest in commercial real estate, which includes hotels. “Anybody can invest,” said Reaves. “A lot of time in our community, people think we don’t have the money to invest.”

Reaves founded Vesterr.com, a commercial real estate crowd-funding portal, to help pass along the knowledge and make investing easy. Along with the company’s CTO Anand Patel, Vesterr was launched in July 2022, a special date for Reaves because it was her late father’s birthday. “It was something to honor and celebrate him with,” she said. 

The goal of Vesterr is simple, according to Reaves, the platform should make investing in commercial real estate easier for people to do. Easier than it was when she decided to buy her first hotel. ‘There has to be a marketplace for this,’ Reaves thought. “I was thinking, ‘How can we automate this process?’”

The future is bright for Reaves, along with plans to continue growing her hospitality portfolio, there is an eight-city Vesterr.com tour scheduled to begin in March. Alongside her business partner Mike Ealy, the “From Broker to Millions” Tour will visit Miami, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and Indianapolis, along with two shows in Atlanta. 

“The goal is to raise $24 million on our platform,” said Reaves. “That’s our big goal.” 

Inspirations from near and far

Davonne Reaves was a band member, but not a member of just any band, the Jonesboro High School Majestic Marching Cardinals. As a high school student, the band was a place where she could carve out an identity for herself while remaining a part of a team. Reaves played the clarinet and the bass clarinet in the school’s concert band. The eclectic group of bandmates taught her how to deal with people from all walks of life. “A lot of my leadership skills come from being in the band,” she said. “Our band was diverse.” 

There have been many other inspirations in Reaves’ life. There have been Women, some she knows personally and others she has never met, who demonstrated strength, intelligence, and skills that have continued to inspire her today. Beginning with her late grandmother Elizabeth Smith, who grew up in a sharecropping family in Georgia. And despite having only had an eighth-grade education, Smith was a driving force in Reeves’ life and educational journey. “She taught us about being a woman and keeping your word,” Reaves said. “Her motto was to always keep a paid-off house in the family and now I’m going to have a paid-off hotel in the family.” 

Reaves considers Sheila Johnson, the founder of Salamander luxury hotels, Erica Qualls-Battey, the general manager of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, and Valerie Ferguson, the first Black general manager of a full-service hotel in the United States. 

Of Johnson, Reaves said, “She was so transparent in her story about how she had to hire the right people because when she started she didn’t know the hotel business. And today her brand can compete against the Marriotts and Four Seasons of the world.” 

Reaves considers Qualls-Battey a friend and calls her “an amazing woman that I look up to.” 

The biggest inspiration however doesn’t have a place in the hospitality space. At least not yet. Reaves said her five-year-old son, whom she is fiercely private about, is her North Star. “He keeps me going,” she said. 

Beyonce also made the list of inspirations. “Her work ethic and creativity is insane,” said Reaves. “How she constantly pays homage to Black women, I just love how she is her own woman and I love that about her.”

The Next Decade

Reaves gives the photographer a big smile while posing for a photo at the top of a staircase. At her back is floor after floor of activity in one of Atlanta’s largest and busiest hotels. The idea of her owning a property like the Hyatt Regency Atlanta one day doesn’t feel too far-fetched. “I didn’t realize when I started this journey that it would end up this way,” Reaves said. “I can’t wait to see what the next 10 years look like.”

She likes to tell stories of meeting people at networking events and them sharing with her that hotel ownership and commercial real estate investment is now a topic of discussion at the dinner table these days. The girl who started working at the front desk so many years ago while simultaneously earning a degree in sociology from Georgia State University is now a mogul who holds a seat on the Georgia State University Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration Board of Advisors.

“I wouldn’t be where I am if I listened to the people who said I couldn’t do it,” Reaves said. 

It’s a good thing there were so many that said she could.

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