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       *BET founder Robert L. Johnson has again entered history books. The first African American to own a cable network has just become the country's largest African American owner of hotels following a $1.7 billion deal involving his investment firm.      

       Johnson’s Bethesda Maryland-based RLJ Development has purchased 100 hotels, most of them Marriotts, from Indiana-based White Lodging Services Corp. The acquisition makes Johnson’s six-year-old firm one of the country's largest franchisees of Marriott properties, and gives the company and its affiliates control of $3 billion in assets and 129 properties scattered in major U.S. markets, reports the Washington Post.       

       Johnson's team feels the hotel industry is fertile ground for investment opportunities, with recent increases in business travel and new properties emerging to meet the demand.       

       "We certainly expect demand to outpace supply in the foreseeable future," Thomas J. Baltimore Jr., president of RLJ Development, told the Post. "And we're still pretty early in the cycle. We foresee about 1 percent supply growth in the next few years at best. The conditions are quite positive to do well."