14th Annual 2026 Boutique Hotel Investment Conference

Registration & Coffee

The day starts here. Coffee, conversation, and the people building the future of boutique hospitality.

Welcome

Boutique hospitality doesn't follow the playbook. It writes its own. This session grounds the day with a look at where the independent sector stands right now — the creativity, the resilience, and the unapologetic commitment to doing things differently that drives it forward — and sets the tone for everything that follows.

Keynote: The Store That Thinks Like a Hotel

With Thierry Prevost, CEO of Printemps New York

There is a store on Wall Street that doesn't feel like a store.

Printemps New York opened its doors in March 2025 inside One Wall Street — a landmarked Art Deco tower whose 1920s red and gold mosaic-tiled Red Room now houses a champagne bar. Three restaurants. Two bars. Designer talks. Art. Performance. A level of curation that has more in common with a great boutique hotel than anything retail has attempted in this country in decades.

Thierry Prevost has spent thirty years building luxury experiences across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia — from Galeries Lafayette to the launch of Printemps Doha. Now, as CEO of Printemps New York, he is leading what may be the most culturally ambitious retail opening of this generation. And what he's built looks a lot less like shopping and a lot more like a third space — a place people come to linger, to be moved, to belong to something.

In this one-on-one conversation, we'll explore what boutique hotels can learn from the world of fashion and luxury retail, where these two industries are quietly converging, and why the most interesting operators in both spaces are asking the same questions about atmosphere, loyalty, and what it means to make someone feel something. If culture is the new amenity, Thierry Prevost is one of the people writing the playbook.

Appraisal & Valuation Trends

With Rod Clough, President of HVS Americas

A hotel is worth what the market says it's worth. Until an appraiser sits down with the numbers.

Boutique hotels have always occupied a unique position in the valuation conversation. The experiential elements that give them their identity — design, location authenticity, wellness programming — don't fit neatly into traditional appraisal models. The industry is catching up, and how those elements get measured is one of the most consequential conversations happening in hospitality real estate right now.

This session takes a candid look at where valuations stand across the boutique and luxury segments. How rising interest rates and shifting cap rates are influencing the appraisal process, which markets and asset types are showing unexpected resilience, and what owners and investors should be doing today to maximize appraised value ahead of a transaction.

Understanding how an appraiser thinks isn't just useful. It's the difference between a good transaction and a great one.

Hospitality Without Borders: Designing for Work, Life & Community

With Ryan Simonetti, CEO & Co-Founder of Convene Hospitality Group

Hospitality didn't stay in its lane. Neither did anything else.

Ryan Simonetti has spent over a decade building at exactly that intersection. As co-founder and CEO of Convene Hospitality Group, he grew the company into the largest provider of premium meeting, event, and flexible workspace in the U.S. and UK by integrating hospitality and lifestyle into commercial real estate. What emerged doesn't belong to one industry. It borrows from all of them.

In this spotlight conversation, Ryan unpacks what separates hospitality from commercial real estate from community-driven third spaces, and why the most compelling operators aren't choosing between them. The boundaries have dissolved, the borrowing is mutual, and the spaces emerging from that overlap are being designed for the full arc of how people work, live, and gather.

The category isn't a monolith. That's exactly what makes it worth watching.

Deal Structuring in a Complex Market

With David Sudeck, Partner, Hospitality Real Estate at Blank Rome / Ernest Lee, Chief Commercial Officer at EOS Hospitality / Robin Kennedy, Executive VP, Chief Development Officer at Montage International

The capital markets didn’t break—they reorganized. For boutique and lifestyle hotels, traditional financing has given way to new investors, new structures, and higher expectations. The developers closing deals today are those who’ve adapted, following capital as it migrates to family offices, high‑net‑worth individuals, and alternative sources.

This session explores the modern boutique hotel capital stack, including equity structures, EB‑5, C‑PACE, and other creative financing tools. Panelists will discuss how these sources are combined to fund new developments, conversions, and repositionings; what smart underwriting looks like today; and how to attract capital while maintaining control and alignment.

The money is there—the challenge is knowing where to look and how to structure it.

Networking Coffee Break – Conversations with Boutique Leaders

Branded Residences

With Ronit Copeland, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at HVS Tel Aviv / Tiffany Cooper, Head of Development, Americas at Mandarin Oriental / Samantha Ahuja, Shareholder at Greenberg Traurig

Lessons From the Sauna Culture Movement

With Robbie Bent, CEO & Co-Founder of Othership / Mauri Waneka, Founder of SCHWET / Andrew Lachlan, Founder & CEO of Sauna House / Rebecca Parekh, Co-Founder & CEO of THE WELL

Steam rooms were once an afterthought. Not anymore.

Long before hotels started treating wellness as an amenity line item, a quiet movement was building — bathhouses and sauna cultures rooted in community, ritual, and the radical proposition that heat and cold and stillness are reason enough to show up. No room key required. Just the thing itself, done well, drawing regulars and destination-seekers alike.

This session brings together the operators building some of the most compelling thermal spaces in the country to examine what they've figured out about belonging, loyalty, and the architecture of a genuine third space. What does it take to make a sauna culture destination that sustains itself on ritual rather than real estate? And what should the boutique hotel world be paying close attention to?

The bathhouse didn't wait for hospitality to catch up. This is what it learned along the way.

Lunch

Savor a specially curated lunch featuring on-site catering with seasonal, sustainably sourced ingredients and options to accommodate every dietary need. With plenty of time for networking, it's the perfect setting to continue the conversations sparked on stage and connect with fellow attendees in a relaxed, unscripted atmosphere.

Emerging Markets and Opportunities

With Christy Reuter, Partner, Hospitality at Blank Rome / Richard Born, Owner of BD Hotels

The investors waiting for calm may be waiting a long time. The ones paying attention are already moving.

Secondary cities and overlooked resort markets are generating the kind of interest that overexposed destinations stopped producing years ago. The geography of opportunity has shifted, and it rewards the developer willing to look before the consensus catches up. Repositioning undervalued assets, building where the fundamentals are strong but capital hasn't arrived yet — that gap is where the interesting work happens.

This session gets into where those markets actually are right now, how to assess long-term value in regions still finding their footing, and what it takes to move first without moving blind. Local knowledge, the right partnerships, a capital stack that works when conventional equity won't show up. Wellness and community programming are reshaping what gets built and where.

The best opportunities rarely announce themselves. That's the point.

Investor Pitch Session – Boutique Projects on the Stage

Equity Investment for Boutique Hotels

With Mark Adams, Partner, Hospitality Business Litigation at Blank Rome / Joe LeVine, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Mercer Street Partners

Boutique hotels have always asked investors to believe in something that doesn't fit neatly into a model. It sits at the intersection of creative vision and complex stakeholder relationships. This session examines that balance from both a capital and risk perspective. Panelists will explore what today's equity investors are actually looking for and how to structure deals that preserve creative control.

The discussion will also confront where boutique projects most often break down—disputes among investors, ownership groups, operators, branding partners, F&B providers, labor, and regulatory agencies—and how those conflicts play out in arbitration, litigation, and ultimately, settlement. Contractual structures can either prevent these disputes or fuel them, and the panel will draw on real-world experience to show how stakeholders can protect asset value.

Small-Scale Success – The Boutique Approach to Hotel Operations

With Jerry Abbott, COO of RBS

Boutique hospitality runs on intention.

Operating at a smaller scale doesn't mean operating with less. It means every decision carries more weight. Service design, technology, direct booking strategy, the balance between efficiency and the human touch that makes a guest actually want to return — these aren't back-of-house conversations. They're the product.

How do you drive direct bookings without the marketing budget of a major flag? Where does technology enhance the guest experience rather than flatten it? And as traveler expectations shift toward longer stays and more residential rhythms, what does boutique operations need to borrow, adapt, or invent?

The stay that feels designed for you didn't happen by accident. That's the boutique operation at its best.

The Listening Bar as Blueprint

With Shane Davis, Owner of Public Records / Adriana Marianella & Louisa Gui, Stylus / Andrew Miele, Chief Development Officer of Proper Hotels

There is a reason people will stand in line to sit in a dark room and listen to records.

A record. Played with intention, on equipment that costs more than most hotel F&B buildouts, by someone who has spent years thinking about what song belongs next to what song. No algorithm. No background. Foreground.

The listening bar has been quietly exploding — Tokyo, Brooklyn, Mexico City, London — and most hotel investors still haven't studied it. They should. These spaces have figured out something the industry has been chasing for years: genuine dwell time, fierce loyalty, a room full of people who showed up for the experience itself. Not the real estate around it. The thing.

This session brings together the owners and music curators behind some of the most compelling listening spaces in the country. We'll get into what they've built and why it matters to anyone developing or investing in boutique hospitality right now. What does a listening bar understand about atmosphere, pacing, and belonging that a hotel F&B program doesn't? Where does the partnership opportunity live? And what happens when a hotel stops treating music as ambiance and starts treating it as the destination?

Going analog turns out to be the most radical thing you can do.

Breakout Rooms

Networking Coffee Break – Conversations with Boutique Leaders

Capital Market Trends

With Glyn Aeppel, President and CEO of Glencove Capital / Patrick Fisher, President of Hotel Zaza / Mark Owens, Vice Chair | Hospitality Practice Group Leader at Colliers

For boutique hotel owners and investors, knowing where capital lives right now is not a background conversation. It is the conversation. Debt availability, pricing dynamics, lender sentiment, shifting deal structures — the landscape is in motion, and the operators who understand it are making moves others aren't positioned to make.

This session takes a direct look at the capital markets shaping boutique hospitality right now. Who is lending, what terms are actually being offered, how economic uncertainty is influencing underwriting, and what shifting deal structures mean for the way projects get financed and refinanced. Whether the goal is a new acquisition, a repositioning, or preparing a portfolio for future growth, the knowledge in this room is actionable.

Capital is moving. The question is whether you know where.

AI

The Other Side of Hospitality: Food & Beverage

With John Meadow, President of LDV Hospitality / Stacy Pilkington, Senior Recruiting Partner, Global Luxury at Gecko Hospitality / Jennifer Vitagliano, Co-Founder of Elizabeth Street Hospitality

Networking Hour

Celebrate a day of ideas and connections over cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. Engage with investors, owners, and boutique experts who share your vision for the future of independent hospitality. This reception is the perfect opportunity to solidify partnerships, spark new conversations, and expand your network in a setting as intentionally curated as the day itself.