Two firms, including a Bethesda-based company, have committed $250 million in equity to investing in hotel properties.

Bethesda-based LaSalle Hotel Properties announced Thursday a joint venture with LaSalle Investment Management Inc. The venture will target U.S. hotel properties in urban and resort markets to make acquisitions gradually over the next three years.

Despite the similar name, the companies are not directly affiliated. LaSalle Hotel Properties used to be the hotel investment arm of Jones Lang LaSalle Group but went public in 1998 and has been independently managed since 2001, according to Justin Boutwell, vice president of finance.

The venture plans to leverage its $250 million into a total of $700 million in investments.

The partnership will target hotel properties in large markets such as New York, Chicago and Boston, Boutwell said Thursday. LaSalle’s current portfolio focuses on eight major markets, but the company sometimes ventures outside those areas, Boutwell said. The target markets are considered to have a high barrier to entry, Boutwell said. For example, D.C. tends to be extremely expensive to invest in, and New York lacks a lot of free land on which to develop hotels, he said.

Some of LaSalle’s existing properties include five Kimpton hotels in D.C. and the Lansdowne resort in Leesburg.

The U.S. hotel industry has been less affected by the country’s economic slowdown than some people anticipated, according to Rick Takach, president of Vesta Hospitality and chairman of the Owners’ Association for InterContinental Hotels.

“The industry has been pretty resilient,” Takach said, noting that there wasn’t as big a glut of pre-slowdown supply as there has been in the past. “Everyone’s expecting the other shoe to fall, but in reality it hasn’t been bad for us. But it’s definitely going to be more difficult to complete a project in the upcoming months.”

melissa.frederick@dcexaminer.com