17th Annual Boutique Hotel Owners Conference

Registration & Coffee & Light Bites

Start the day with specialty coffee, fresh pastries, and good conversation. It's a relaxed moment to connect with colleagues before the program begins.

Opening Ceremony: The Age of Wonder

With a Ariela opens the day, welcoming the room into the world of The Age of Wonder. Drawing from her own recent observations, the places she's been, the details that stopped her mid-step, she sets the tone for two days built around a simple idea: that the best hotels are never designed from a brief, but from a life closely paying attention. A grounding start for a room that already knows how to build. Today is about where the ideas come from.

Top Issues Owners Face Today

This Session is Sponsored By: CVENT / Greenberg Traurig

With Maya Mallick, Owner & Creative Director, The Culver Hotel / Leo Grifka, Founder & CEO, Grifka Group / Jayson Seidman, Founder & Managing Partner, Sandstone / Alison Weinberg-Fahey, Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig

The conversation BHOC has opened with for years, because the room trusts it. An unfiltered read on where the industry actually stands from owners already deep in it, case studies and polish aside: margins tightening, talent harder to hold onto, and the discipline it takes to stay distinct while everyone else chases the same playbook. The room checking its own pulse before the day turns outward.

Capital Moves Fast, So Should You

With Thomas Brown, CEO, Ad Altius Advisors

ADRs at the top of the boutique market keep climbing — and so far, nothing is slowing them down. Thomas Brown breaks down the economic forces behind ultra-luxury pricing power, why billionaires are grumbling but still booking, and what that tells us about where the ceiling actually sits (spoiler: there isn't one yet, at least not in the short term). He'll unpack the opportunity this creates for operators nimble enough to move with the market, plus a real-time read on capital allocation trends in hospitality — a landscape shifting week to week, not quarter to quarter. Expect a session grounded in what's happening right now, from someone who's tracking it daily.

"Connect with Strangers" by BLLA

With Kama Carter, CEO, Southall Farm & Inn / Gary Pearl, SVP, Aethos Consulting Group / Thomas Brown, CEO, Ad Altius Advisors / Jayson Seidman, Founder & Managing Partner, Sandstone / Frank Wolfe, CEO, HFTP / Maya Mallick, Owner & Creative Director, The Culver Hotel / Alison Weinberg-Fahey, Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig

People choose a table by theme, each led by a facilitator, and spend the session working through real problems with leaders and experts they'd otherwise never cross paths with. A stranger's perspective on your property can do what a familiar one never could. Built for people who already know their own blind spots exist, and want someone else's eyes on them.

Lakeside Lunch

Lunch outside, by the water, with a pace built for conversation rather than a full agenda. A chance to sit with the ideas from the morning before the afternoon picks back up, or simply enjoy the setting with people from the room worth spending an hour with.

Join us for the Tech Brainstorm session starting at 1:30pm. With Christie Toal , Owner, The Compass McMinnville

Machines, Meet Magic

This Session is Sponsored By: Think Reservations

With Professor Ira Vouk, Founder & CEO, AI Hospitality Alliance

AI offers boutique hotels new ways to support their teams and serve guests, but where should an owner begin? Drawing on the AI Hospitality Alliance and HEDNA’s study of 100+ unique AI use cases across 39 hotel systems, Ira Vouk will show where the industry is applying AI in operations, revenue, marketing, and the guest journey. She’ll also share emerging ideas from this fall’s AI conferences and give owners a practical way to decide what deserves their attention. The goal: use AI to make more room for the personal touches that make a boutique hotel unforgettable.

Proper Planning: Protecting the Hotel You Built

This Session is Sponsored By: Pacific Advisors / Petra Risk Solutions

With Rob Bukacek, Financial Advisor, Pacific Advisors / Brad Durbin, VP, Petra Risk Solutions / Maya Mallick, Owner & Creative Director, The Culver Hotel / Rajvi Shah, CEO, Serenite Hotels / Angela Bessard, CEO, The Real Credit Queen

You built it. Now what's protecting it? This session opens with a 10-minute briefing from Pacific Advisors on the planning most owners put off until it's too late — succession, continuity, and the financial structures that keep a property in the right hands when life (or death) forces the question. From there, Pacific Advisors and Petra Risk Insurance join boutique hotel owners on stage to translate that planning into the day-to-day: emergency preparedness, OSHA compliance, and the risk exposures that can undo years of work in a single incident. The conversation moves from the boardroom to the back-of-house — what to have in place before you need it, and what too many operators only learn after.

The New Language of Luxury Travel

This Session is Sponsored By: Capital One Travel

With Hya Valdez, Head of Global Partnerships, Luxury Travel, Capital One Trave

Long before a guest crosses the threshold, the story of their stay has already begun: in a search result, a booking confirmation, a single image that made them stop scrolling. This session opens with a look at how luxury and modern travelers are discovering and booking hotels today, then turns to independent owners, designers, and tastemakers on what it takes to be chosen. The conversation explores how independent hotels can extend their reach through travel partnerships without dulling what makes them singular, and how wonder can begin at the reservation rather than the room. Panelists will unpack what's driving demand across markets now and what's quietly lost its pull, how design connects guests to a place rather than simply housing them there, and what the hotels and destinations earning a spot on the Top Lists are doing differently.

Breakouts

Breakout Session #1: Art is Infrastructure: The Analogue Advantage in a Digital Hospitality World
Hospitality is increasingly built around experience, differentiation and emotional connection, yet art is still too often treated as a decorative FF&E line item. Often procured late, value-engineered and compressed against other budgets.

This conversation explores a different approach: art as infrastructure for experience, place and brand.

Drawing on Farmboy Fine Arts' work across global hospitality and other experience-led brands, we will explore how a deliberate art strategy can create identity, strengthen connection to place, generate memorable and shareable moments, support local culture and ultimately contribute to measurable Return on Experience (ROE) and Return on Investment (ROI).

As hospitality becomes increasingly digitized, we will also ask a larger question: Could the truly analogue, human experience become one of luxury hospitality's most valuable differentiators?
With Todd Towers, CEO & Founder, Farmboy Fine Arts

#2 From Search to Stay: A Working Guide to the AI Readiness Audit for Boutique Hotels Mitch Tarr, Zin Marketing

AI is changing how hotels get discovered, and for boutique properties, being found is no longer just about search rankings. In this hands-on workshop, Mitch Tarr breaks down how AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini decide which hotels get found, trusted, and recommended, and what properties can do to become more verifiable. Attendees will learn how to read a real AI readiness audit, understand the key signals behind it, and identify gaps in their own website that may be holding them back. The session gives owners a practical way to strengthen how their property is understood and represented by AI, starting with the story, details, and differentiators they already have.

Break

Case Study: Two Sides of the Same Property

This Session is Sponsored By: Nespresso / Nestlé Waters & Premium Beverages

With Mike French and Matt French, Partners, Life & Times / Ariela Kiradjian, Partner & COO / Co-Founder, BLLA

A real partnership, examined in the open. Ownership and F&B operators who've actually built together walk through how the two sides divide the work: where vision comes from ownership, where execution belongs to the operator, and the friction points in between that never make it into a case study. Less theory, more an honest account of one working relationship the industry watches closely, told by the people actually in it.

Curating Wonder the San Vicente Way

This Session is Sponsored By: Coast to Coast / The Company Store

With Jess Wilner, CEO, San Vicente Clubs / Annabel Schwartz, Co-Founder, House of Talana

Exclusivity isn't just about who gets through the door. It's about creating a world people want to belong to. San Vicente has built its reputation around that idea, blending hospitality, design, and a deeply curated sense of community into a membership experience that feels considered at every turn. In this conversation, Annabel Schwartz sits down with Jess Wilner, CEO of San Vicente Clubs, to unpack what it takes to create that kind of pull: how you define who the experience is for, create a sense of discovery and belonging, and make every detail feel intentionally selected rather than simply elevated. For hotel owners, it's a look at what happens when you borrow from the private club model and use exclusivity not as a barrier, but as part of the magic.

View From the Top

This Session is Sponsored By: Arch Roamright / IDeaS Revenue Solutions

With Kama Carter, CEO, Southall Farm & Inn / Cory Sobczyk, VP, Business Development, Arch RoamRight

A conversation with the people running boutique and luxury hotel companies at the highest level. CEOs carry the same instinct for noticing that built each individual property, but at a much larger scale: where they're placing bets, what keeps them up at night that a GM or owner rarely has to think about, and how they protect a portfolio's specific point of view across dozens of properties without letting scale sand it down to nothing. The rare vantage point where wonder has to survive at the size of an entire company.

Wander Time

An Evening at Louie’s

Night falls over LOUIE's, sponsored by SiteMinder, whose channel and distribution technology powers booking strategies for boutique and independent hotels around the world. A relaxed shift out of the day's sessions and into conversation, drinks in hand as the room settles into evening. The kind of setting where the best ideas from the day keep going informally, before dinner picks up the pace.

Dinner & Game Night

Dinner gives way to a night of trivia, built around good company and a little friendly competition. After a full first day of sessions, this is the room letting its guard down together before day two picks back up. Sometimes the most honest conversations happen at a trivia table rather than on a panel.

Morning Community Meetup

Breakfast

A slower start before the day picks back up. Breakfast alongside a quiet stretch of morning meant for arriving fully, whether that's a few minutes of stillness, a walk before the first session, or simply coffee without a phone in hand. In a room full of people who spend their lives noticing on behalf of others, a moment to notice something for themselves.

The Restaurant That Makes the Hotel

This Session is Sponsored By: Nespresso / Nestlé Waters & Premium Beverages

With Oliver English, Co-Founder & CEO, Common Table Creative / Tony Greenberg, Co-Founder, SingleThread / Marcel Vigneron, Chef / Owner, Wolf

For operators who already treat F&B as identity rather than amenity, this is the conversation about what it takes to make it the reason someone books. Talk turns to concept, sourcing, and staffing at the level required to run a restaurant a guest would seek out on its own merit, and the discipline it takes to keep it that sharp.

Running the Room

This Session is Sponsored By: CVENT / Think Reservations

With Gregory Day, Managing Director, Malibu Beach Inn / Christopher Saputo, General Manager, El Encanto / E Scot Fuller, Director of Product Advocacy, ThinkReservations

The people who actually run distinctive properties talk about the job as it really is, the version that rarely makes it into a panel bio. The decisions nobody sees, the standards they hold the line on, and what it takes to hold a hotel's identity together when everything around them is pulling it toward average. Great GMs are collectors too, of small reads on a guest, a mood in the lobby, the exact moment something needs fixing before anyone complains. A conversation about what they've noticed over years of running a room, and how that noticing becomes the difference between a hotel that runs and one that's actually alive.

The Retail Opportunity Hotels Keep Missing

This Session is Sponsored By: Capital One Travel / The Company Store

With Kimberly Walker, Founder & Creative Director, Nomada Hotel Group / Sky Mitchell, CEO & Founder, Basecamp Resorts & Everwild Nordic Spa & Hotels

Retail in most hotels is an afterthought bolted onto a lobby, a shelf of branded candles nobody asked for. But the objects a guest actually wants to take home are the same ones this whole conference is built around: the specific things a hotelier noticed and folded into the property, a scent, a ceramic, a book left just so. This session is for operators ready to treat that instinct as an actual revenue line, and what it takes to turn what a hotel already collects into a genuine profit center rather than a decorative one.

Boutique Industry Report: Market Shifts to Watch

With Katy Black, Managing Director, HVS

A clear-eyed look at where the boutique and luxury segment actually stands, beyond the anecdotes. Performance data, demand trends, and the numbers shaping the segment right now, delivered by people who track them for a living, paired with what those shifts actually mean for operators already running distinctive properties. The industry's current reality, before the room turns back to the harder, more personal questions the rest of the conference is built around.

Break

What It Costs to Build a Feeling, AI? Where are people saving money?

This Session is Sponsored By: Coast to Coast / Petra Risk Solutions

With Luca Franco, Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Luxury Frontiers / Jayson Seidman, Founder & Managing Partner, Sandstone Development / Ferial Sadeghian, Owner / Founder, Cuyama Buckhorn

Every hotel that makes a guest feel something was, somewhere behind the scenes, a spreadsheet first. Brokers, developers, and investors who've financed genuinely distinctive properties talk through what actually gets funded and what gets cut, and how the best deals protect the details a guest would notice the absence of long before they could ever articulate it. A real conversation about what it takes to defend atmosphere in a term sheet.

The Amanvari Fallout - What to Learn

This Session is Sponsored By: Arch Roamright / Pacific Advisors

With Trish Nugent, SVP - Head of PR & PA, Mower / Ru Kotryna, Partner, Lobby Riot / Ariela Kiradjian, Partner & COO / Co-Founder, BLLA

Amanvari, a new luxury resort in Mexico, found itself at the center of a major public relations crisis during its opening week in summer 2026. After a prominent luxury travel YouTuber’s reservation was canceled at the last minute, he arrived at the property and was turned away at the gate, leading to a viral dispute and further escalation involving the police.

This session brings together perspectives from PR and crisis management, hotel operations, and influencer relations to examine what happened, how the situation unfolded publicly, and what the industry can learn from it. A candid conversation about managing a crisis in real time, the intersection of luxury hospitality and social media, and how the decisions made behind the scenes can quickly shape a brand’s public narrative.

Breakouts

Breakout Session #1: The Story Is the Strategy
A breakout for owners on the marketing decisions that actually move a property, told from the ownership seat rather than the agency's. What's worth a real investment versus what's noise, how to think about influencer partnerships without losing control of a property's voice, and how the same instinct for noticing that shaped the physical space should show up in every piece of content that leaves the building. Practical, budget-aware, and built around protecting a story that's actually yours.
With Hannah Corbin, Founder, Savor Social Studio

Breakout Session #2: People & The Law
The legal ground a hotel's culture actually stands on. For operators already building a team that reflects the property's identity, this session gets into where that ambition meets real exposure: hiring, compliance, and the HR realities that come with running a distinct operation rather than a standardized one. A practical conversation about how small businesses can set themselves up with the right best practices from the start — creating clear processes, protecting the business, and building a strong foundation for their people.
With Kara Cole, Shareholder, Littler Mendelson / Gary Pearl, SVP, AETHOS Consulting

Lunch

Lunch outside, by the water, with a pace built for conversation rather than a full agenda. A chance to sit with the ideas from the morning before the afternoon picks back up, or simply enjoy the setting with people from the room worth spending an hour with.

The Nightstand Test - Show and Tell

This Session is Sponsored By: Greenberg Traurig / Etengra

With Kimberly Walker, Founder & Creative Director, Nomada Hotel Group / Ariela Kiradjian, Partner & COO / Co-Founder, BLLA

Each guest brings something that shaped how they think about hospitality: a book, an object, a photo, whatever's actually been sitting on their nightstand lately. Less an interview than a room full of people showing their work, tracing the direct line from a personal obsession to a decision they made in a property. The clearest possible proof that the best hotels are never built from a brief.

A Masterclass on Luxury

With Dr. Daniel Langer, CEO, Equite


What defines true luxury in a fragmented, fast-moving world? This thought-provoking conversation explores how boutique hospitality can draw inspiration from the broader universe of luxury—fashion, beauty, design, and culture—to stay relevant, resilient, and emotionally resonant.

Led by a leading international luxury strategist, this session reveals how cultural codes and brand signals are interpreted globally, and how the most iconic names in luxury create desire across borders without losing their soul.

From editorial storytelling to scent design, from packaging to pricing psychology, attendees will leave with a sharper eye for the details that matter, and a stronger understanding of how boutique hotels can express luxury with intention, restraint, and enduring appeal.

"Connect with Strangers" by BLLA

With Kimberly Walker, Founder & Creative Director, Nomada Hotel Group / Frank Wolfe, CEO, HFTP / Trish Nugent, SVP - Head of PR & PA, Mower / Oliver English, Co-Founder & CEO, Common Table Creative / Tony Greenberg, Co-Founder, Singlethread

Round two, a fresh set of tables, a fresh set of themes. By day two, the room has already had a full day to size each other up; this is where those loose threads from yesterday's sessions get pulled into deeper conversation with people they still haven't met. Each table led by a facilitator, built for working through the specific problem sitting on your desk right now with someone whose read on it you couldn't have predicted.

Closing Ritual: Where Will You Go From Here?

With Ariela Kiradjian, Partner & COO / Co-Founder, BLLA

A close built for reflection rather than a wrap-up. After two days spent tracing wonder back to its source, the room takes a moment to sit with what actually landed, the observation that stuck, the idea worth carrying home, the property detail someone finally has language for. Less a summary of the conference, more a send-off with a single question: what will you build differently now that you're paying attention again?

Farewell Cocktails

One last drink before everyone scatters back to their own properties, carrying whatever landed with them over the past two days. Less a formal close, more an extension of the conversations already in motion, the ones that started at a session and never quite finished, the connections worth one more exchange before the room empties out. The Age of Wonder ends the way it started: people paying attention to each other.