Capital Is Moving. Do You Know Where?

What the investors, lenders, and operators on our capital markets panel actually said about where boutique hotel deals get done right now.

From the Boutique Hotel Investment Conference, June 3, 2026 — Capital Market Trends

The panel description for this session ended with a question: capital is moving. Do you know where? Thirty minutes later, the four people on stage had made it clear that the honest answer, for most boutique hotel developers, is probably not well enough.

Moderated by Rod Clough, President of HVS Americas, the conversation brought together Glyn Aeppel, President and CEO of Glencove Capital; Mark Owens, Vice Chair and Hospitality Practice Group Leader at Colliers; and Patrick Fisher, President of Hotel ZaZa, the Texas-based luxury lifestyle brand with properties in Houston, Austin, and Dallas. What followed was one of the more candid exchanges of the day — less about the promise of the market and more about what it actually takes to move in it.

The Market Is Back. Don’t Mistake That for Easy.

Mark Owens opened with a clear read: transaction activity is up, equity is selectively available, and the debt capital markets are liquid across all four pillars he tracks — alternatives, banks, life insurance companies, and CMBS. “It’s a nice time,” he said, “despite the volatility in the market.”

Glyn Aeppel followed with the qualifier that the room needed to hear.

“Raising capital for boutique independent hotels is not for the faint of heart. It is tough. Period.” The smaller the asset, the more independent it is, the harder the raise. What Aeppel is seeing shift is where equity is coming from: high net worth family offices, many of which have been heavily allocated to technology and AI, are now looking at hard assets differently. “A lot of them are feeling like having real hard assets where human contact is real — not through social media — and having diversification in terms of owning some of these experiential destinations is a good strategy.” The family office net, she said, has widened significantly for boutique hotels. But debt remains its own challenge, and she was direct about it: “Don’t underestimate how hard it is.”

Rod Clough noted that the week’s numbers told their own story — luxury RevPAR was up 14%, with the lift trickling down through the tiers from there. Owens confirmed the momentum: Colliers had four closings in a single week, something he said hadn’t happened in three years. Cross-border capital is returning. Twenty to thirty new lenders have become active in the space. “If we can create a competitive market, we can push down pricing,” Owens said. “If we can push down pricing, that helps people feel better about values.”

Still, Aeppel was careful to separate the broader transaction market from what’s actually happening in the boutique independent segment. She put out eight LOIs in the last year. One deal took eighteen months to close. “Even though there’s a lot of capital looking for transactions,” she said, “finding the right transactions at the right basis is a whole other challenge. To me that is the biggest constraint right now — it’s not money.”

What You Need Before You Walk In the Room

Patrick Fisher has heard a lot of pitches. His read on what separates the ones that go somewhere from the ones that don’t came down to two questions he asks himself about any project: do you have the fiscal means, and do you have the structure and the willingness to get there?

“You got to surround yourself with the best talent on your team,” he said. And he was specific about what kind of talent matters: people who have worked in the independent space. “People who’ve been in the independent space have a different skill set than those that have been in branded. Not that it can’t work, but oftentimes it won’t.”

Aeppel added the front-end rigor that investors actually need to see before a meeting happens: a thorough assessment of the transaction, detailed financial underwriting, and above all, a clear vision. “What is this hotel to become? Who are your customers? Why are you different? Why can’t you be a Marriott or a Hilton?” The architecture can be beautiful. The concept can be exciting. “But it’s not going to get somebody to actually give you a check.”

Owens was blunt about the construction side: until you have drawings, bids, and contractor conversations, nobody can help you. And those bids need to be recent. “Tomorrow pricing can change,” he said. Fisher put it plainly: “There’s nothing cheap about this. Do it cheap, do it wrong.”

The shorthand Owens offered: three things matter above everything else. Financial wherewithal. Experience. Location. “If you don’t have one of those, the deal doesn’t work.”

Distress, Storytelling, and the Difference Between a Pitch and a Plan

One of the more useful reframes of the session came from Owens on the question of what actually plays well in a committee room. A distressed asset with a clear vision and a proven operator behind it is a fundamentally different story than a piece of land with a first-time developer attached to it. “I love this deal because it’s distressed and we’ve got this vision and this plan, and Glyn, who’s done 50 of these, is going to be our partner — that is a very different story than saying I have a piece of land, I have an idea, and I’m a first-time developer.”

Track record travels. Even on the debt side, where the process is more formulaic, the criteria rhyme with the equity conversation: proof that you can complete it, net worth equal to the loan amount, 10 to 15% of that in liquidity. “That’s not necessarily a small dollar amount sitting in your account,” Owens noted.

Fisher’s articulation of what the best independent operators do differently stayed with the room. “The independents that do it really, really well, they know who they are, they’re laser focused. Appealing to everyone is just as bad as appealing to no one. They know who their customer is — and they’re able to story tell that in a way that’s uniquely their own.”

Soft Brand vs. Independent: Freedom, Fees, and Loyalty

The question of whether to affiliate with a soft brand surfaced, and Fisher distilled the trade-off to three words: freedom, fees, and loyalty. Independence means a point of view. It means owning your customer data. It means building a database that has long-term value. “There’s a real value in that that is going to help propel you as you look to launch and upswing if you have a long-term plan.”

Aeppel framed the soft brand as an insurance policy for assets that don’t have a strong enough story to stand alone. If a property is on hotel row with no meaningful differentiation, affiliation might make sense. But for a truly iconic asset? “You would destroy the asset by having it tied in with these big brands, because then it becomes part of the commodities business.”

The panel landed on something Aeppel said that is probably the clearest filter for the decision: the question is whether you’re a hunter or whether you want the Marriott system to do it for you. “It’s not easy. You have to be really a grinder and a hunter to find your customers and be very creative about getting them. Any Marriott GM can never run an independent hotel — they’re used to the system. The whole profile of people running independent hotels is very, very different. They seek and find. They don’t just wait.”

AI at the Property Level

When the conversation turned to AI, Fisher was measured. The biggest expense in hotels is labor, and he’s not seeing AI move that needle in any meaningful way at the front of house. “I don’t see it replacing the housekeeper, replacing the engineer.” Where it’s showing up is in the back office — revenue management, sales, finance — and in freeing up managers to actually be on the floor. “You can’t cut your middle to success. You’ve got to grow top line, you’ve got to figure out ways to program, figure out ways to activate. The only way to do that is to free their time up and get them on the floor.” The big brands will solve for this before independents do — they have the R&D budget — but for now, the value is in efficiency, not replacement.

On Family Offices

The session closed with a question from a small boutique owner trying to navigate the family office world. Aeppel’s answer was honest in a way that the question deserved: there is no system. “It’s somewhat luck, to be honest.” What she’s found is that family offices need a personal reason — a connection to the region, a relationship with the market, something beyond the asset itself. “If the family office I’m speaking to may be big investors in hotels, but that area doesn’t mean anything to them, they’ll just say not interested.” Her advice: start regional. Look at the families who are wealthy and active in the area around your asset. Talk to as many people as possible. One conversation leads to the next. “It’s wild and cowboy-ish and crazy, but fun.”

BLLA’s Boutique Hotel Investment Conference took place on June 3, 2026, at 237 Park Avenue, with an evening program at NeueHouse Madison Square, made possible with the support of Blank Rome and Convene Hospitality Group.