What defines a successful lifestyle hospitality brand? It’s a question that Keith Evans is more qualified than most to answer. The former chief investment and development officer at Ennismore – home to iconic lifestyle brands like Hoxton, Delano and Mondrian – is now the founder and CEO of Lifestyle Hospitality Capital (LHC) Group.
LHC Group is the majority owner of the Dean Hotel Group, which began as a single design-led boutique hotel in Dublin in 2014, and has since expanded into Germany and the U.S.
The route to success
Fundamentally, a successful lifestyle hospitality brand needs to be financially viable, durable and it needs to have longevity, he said: “It's about creating this world around the brand and around the real estate, to drive revenues and profitability. But it's a creative process and, if you do it well, you also have a brand that can cross over into new cultures.”
Staying close to the original blueprint of the brand is important, noted Remi Delpech, COO, Nikki Beach Hospitality, a business that started with a single beach club in Miami and now operates in around 20 global locations across beach clubs, hotels and resorts, restaurants, residences, and retail.
He said: “We are a family-owned business, so we have a CEO who is very hands-on and she always reminds us of the brand’s roots. It’s based in Miami. We started with the first beach club 27 years ago, and she still owns 100 percent of the of the company.”
Why concepts fail
However, for every Nikki Beach or Hoxton, there are thousands of lifestyle hospitality concepts that struggle financially. The most common challenges, according to Evans, are F&B, design, and distribution.
Achieving consistent departmental profitability in F&B is a struggle for many, he said, and overspending on décor during renovations or development can eat into margins before a hotel has even opened.
With distribution, the hard task is: “to create a world and a brand that matters, with recognition and a following; stickiness with your consumer base and a good line of communication.”
Complex operations
For owners and investors who are used to simpler, standardised hotel concepts, such as roadside motels, lifestyle concepts require far greater levels of investment and multiple, detail-rich executions across design, community building, and brand creation.
“By nature there are lot more layers of attention that are required, so maybe for a standard investor, there are more things that might go wrong,” commented Evans.
Lifestyle investors need to be prepared for the financing of various experiences and activations rather than simply providing a bed and a shower for the night.
Evans highlighted the importance of achieving as much commercial alignment as possible between stakeholders: “Our industry has been split up into many parts and the result is that there are a variety of conflicts of interest. That’s one of the reasons that we're focused on building out fully integrated platforms, where we own the real estate, we own the brands, we own the management.”
Finding the right partners
How do lifestyle brands find the right partners and investors? At Nikki Beach, some customers liked the product so much that they became owners. Delpech said: “Some of our owners are probably the highest spenders we had at our beach clubs, so it was very easy to convince them that there's a liability engaging major productions or major entertainment. It’s down to your brand equity to convince those future owners to bear this kind of risk.”
Mark Keiser, president of development, Viceroy Hotel Group, added that, at times, over-enthusiastic owners need to be reminded of the financial realities: “Oftentimes it’s the owner who falls in love with the extras, and it's the brand and operators’ responsibility to say: ‘If we keep going in this direction, we’re going to need to achieve €1,500 ADR rather than €1,000 ADR and that may not be justifiable. If you don't have that discipline, you can run a foul pretty easily.”
Scaling with soul
Having opened its first design-led luxury lifestyle hotel in Santa Monica in 2000, Viceroy was fully acquired by hotel investment and management giant Highgate in 2023. With Highgate’s backing, the revitalised brand focuses on destination‑specific experiences with operations in Colorado, Serbia, Portugal, and Africa, among others.
How do lifestyle brands scale without losing their authenticity? For Evans, to retain the heart and soul of the business, the limit is three or four properties a year.
He added: “But at some point, the founder or the stakeholders of the brand can't do it forever, and a larger company above says, "Hey, I can scale this three times faster, and they provide an exit. It happens.”
Big five exits
Indeed, the fast-growing popularity of lifestyle hospitality has seen the global hotel groups buy up a swathe of entrepreneurial brands in recent years: Ennismore sold to Accor; Graduate and NoMad to Hilton; Standard to Hyatt; Ruby to IHG; and citizenM to Marriott, to name a few.
Is it inevitable that niche lifestyle hotel brands eventually become part of the big five’s luxury and lifestyle divisions? Delpech replied: “We have a CEO who is really emotionally connected to her brand, and she's not ready to let go, but I think ultimately there will be a stage when we will have to entertain this opportunity.”
He added: “Whatever happens with an emergent acquisition, it's important that a brand ambassador remains within the new structure. It's about setting expectations from the beginning and making sure that those big five understand it.”
Alternative ecosystem
For any entrepreneur, keeping liquidity options open is important, said Evans. “Knowing that there's a monetisation option at the global listed level is a good thing. Relying on that as your sole strategy is not a good thing.”
There are alternative routes, he added: “There is a large and growing part of the investor and development development community that wants to work outside of the large institutional players with their standardised approach, partly because they see where the consumer is going, partly because they want a different way of working.”
All quotes taken from the panel ‘Vibes v returns: Future of lifestyle and experiential concepts’ at IHIF EMEA 2026 in Berlin. The panel was expertly moderated by Robert Walters, chief investment officer, Global Asset Solutions