The last time the U.S. Small Business Administration raised its loan guarantee limits on financial institutions for two main loan programs was about 16 years ago.
But the cost to construct or renovate hotels and motels — or really anything else — has increased significantly since then, said Vikash Patel, regional director of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association for the South Region in Texas and president of the Haven Hospitality Group in New Braunfels, Texas.
“That’s been quite some time; we went through all the COVID-19 inflation all these years, so from 2010 to now the amount of money and capital needed to open a business has gone up tremendously,” Patel said.
Patel recently visited McAllen for an event offering an update to his membership before the start of 2027.
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Kristen Mosbrucker-Garza
Reporter
Kristen Mosbrucker-Garza is a versatile multimedia news reporter who lives and works along the Texas-Mexico border in Hidalgo County. Mosbrucker-Garza is a news reporter for the Rio Grande Valley Business Journal. During her career she's worked for the McAllen Monitor, San Antonio Business Journal, The Advocate Newspaper in Louisiana, Phoenix New Times, and public media outlets in Baltimore and Philadelphia.
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