Life House Launches Life Hospitality to Support Independent Hotel Owners with COVID-19 Recovery
Life House, a tech-enabled hotel brand and management company, announced the launch of Life Hospitality, a management company focused on maximizing hotel profitability for independent hotels through tech-powered cost reductions and revenue enhancements - without a renovation or rebranding. To support owners in particular need of support following Covid-19 impact, Life Hospitality is offering no transition fees and no management fees until 2021.
The announcement comes a few months following the company closing a $30M Series B financing round. The investment was led by leading travel-tech investors, Thayer Ventures, with Tiger Global, JLL Spark, and Ashton Kutcher & Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures among others. Several strategic investors also participated in the round, including the former Chairman of Morgans Hotel Group, David Hamamoto, and Jim Ketai - the Founder of Bedrock Detroit - the owner of Detroit’s Shinola Hotel. The round also included follow-on investments from the company’s prior investors Global Founders Capital, Comcast Ventures & Trinity Ventures.
Life House was founded by luxury boutique hotel veterans in 2017 and has rebuilt the complex hotel technology stack from the ground up to create a completely new operational model that allows for a robust, lean operation to hotel owners and a great hospitality service to travelers. The company has already seamlessly taken over seven hotels to date and to ensure quality control will initially only be selecting only 30 more hotels to partner with this year.
“There are many independent hotel owners out there who have created great independent hotel concepts but haven’t sorted out the increasingly complicated business of operating them,” explained Founder & CEO, Rami Zeidan. “Strong hotel revenue growth over the last several years has masked the underlying operational challenges that have become more apparent with Covid-19.”
“As hotel owners started reaching out to us for help, but without capital to renovate into a Life House, we saw an opportunity to offer the same great service we provide to our Life House branded hotels to the broader independent hotel community,” explained Bryan Dunn, Head of Growth for the company. “We already operate a number of unique independent hotels on behalf of existing partners, who have been impressed with our ability to increase NOI and guest satisfaction such that they’re actively seeking to acquire additional properties alongside our platform – despite today’s uncertain market conditions.”
Life Hospitality leverages a proprietary technology stack that enables its teams to efficiently drive incremental revenue and risk-free cost savings to the bottom line, supporting owners in a tepid demand environment post Covid-19.
Life Hospitality has fully automated and centralized functions like financial accounting & reporting, pricing & revenue management, and digital marketing (especially through meta-search channels), allowing for advanced operations and minimized costs without diluting guest experience. In addition to these operational advantages, because of its clean technology infrastructure, Life Hospitality is able to take over existing hotels in as little as 1 week and train staff on its intuitive software in a single day, materially decreasing transition costs and pre-opening costs for owners.
The company’s current portfolio encompasses 13 projects ranging from a 17-room boutique inn to a 131-room lifestyle hotel, with a wide-array of food & beverage outlets. The company will continue to expand Life House - its responsive, locally-rooted 4-star brand - while actively growing its portfolio of independent hotels in collaboration with owners across the country.