17th Annual Boutique Hotel Owners Conference

Registration & Brunch

More than just caffeine—this is a curated moment to warm up conversations, reconnect with colleagues, and explore the venue’s natural flow.
Expect specialty brews, nourishing bites, and intentional ambiance to match the caliber of attendees.

Opening Ceremony

Ariela and Friends
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

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.

What It Costs to Build a Feeling

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.

"Connect with Strangers" by BLLA

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.

The Restaurant That Makes the Hotel

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.

The State of Travel

A conversation on where the broader travel industry is actually heading: shifting traveler behavior, what's driving demand in boutique and luxury right now, and what those larger currents mean for the owners in this room building inside them. Every property here operates inside these tides, and the sharpest owners still find the specific, personal detail that a larger industry trend could never predict.

What the CEO Sees

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.

Breakouts

Breakout Session #1: Who Takes the Keys — Succession Planning
Succession is one of the most consequential decisions an owner will make and one of the least discussed out loud. This session gets into the practical and personal sides of passing on a property, from family transitions to bringing in outside leadership, and how to protect what makes a hotel distinct through a change in hands. Honest talk about timing, readiness, and the conversations owners tend to put off until they finally can't be.

Breakout Session #2: The Lost Art of Innkeeping
There was a version of hospitality built entirely on attention: knowing a guest's name, their usual order, the small things that made them feel expected rather than processed. This session is a conversation about what's been lost as hotels scaled and systemized, and what the most exacting operators are doing to bring genuine innkeeping back into properties built for scale instead. Less nostalgia, more a case for why that level of care is a business advantage again.

Break

Case Study: Two Sides of the Same Property

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.

People, Culture and 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. Culture as something the law actually touches, rather than just a talking point.

Wander Time

Unscheduled time on purpose, space to explore on your own terms, whether that means a walk, a conversation that started earlier and never finished, or simply sitting with an idea from the day. In keeping with this year's theme, sometimes the best material for building a hotel comes from a moment nobody planned

An Evening at Loui'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 over a trivia table rather than a panel one.

Breakfast & Mindful Mornings

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.

Running the Room: Luxury General Managers Talk

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

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

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.

Machines, Meet Magic

A conversation on where new tools actually belong in a boutique property, and where they don't. What's worth adopting for efficiency's sake, from distribution to the AI now reaching every corner of the industry, and how to bring it in without flattening the specific, human details that make a property distinct in the first place. A real look at using the machinery of the business to protect wonder rather than replace it.

"Connect with Strangers" by BLLA

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.

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.

The Nightstand Test - Show and Tell

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.

Fresh Openings: New Boutique Hotels

A first look at the properties setting the tone for what's next, including an inside view of Public Hotel's upcoming West Hollywood debut. The people actually behind these openings talk through the decisions that shaped them: what got built from instinct rather than a brief, what changed between concept and completion, and where they see the category heading from the middle of building it themselves.

Breakout Sessions

Breakout Session #1: The Budget Is a Love Language
Every line item in an annual budget is a decision about what a hotel actually values, and what it's willing to let go of to protect the rest. This breakout gets into the real mechanics of operational budgeting: where the sharpest operators spend without hesitation, where they cut without guilt, and how they defend the specific, sometimes irrational line items that don't pencil out on paper but are exactly what a guest remembers. Practical, numbers-forward, and built around the idea that a budget is the very tool that protects wonder, rather than its enemy.

Breakout Session #2: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 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 be showing up in every piece of content that leaves the building. Practical, budget-aware, and built around protecting a story that's actually yours.

Closing Ritual: Where Will You Go From Here?

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.