Pasricha reckons that the strength of boutique hotels lies in the fact that they can own and operate their own buildings.

Hotelier Sharan Pasricha rocked the hotel world with his group Ennismore’s flagship brand The Hoxton hotels. Now the British brand is set to expand into the US market with new hotels in New York, Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles in the pipeline

Hotelier Sharan Pasricha rocked the hotel world with his group Ennismore’s flagship brand The Hoxton hotels. Now the British brand is set to expand into the US market with new hotels in New York, Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles in the pipeline. We have a look at what makes this hip hotel brand so special.

Boutique hotel pioneers at The Hoxton

Sharan Pasricha is not your average hotelier. His first foray into the world of hospitality was a bid for the purchase of Soho House in London after he graduated from London Business School. The sale didn’t go through, so he founded his own group, Ennismore, and bought a boutique hotel in Shoreditch in 2012 which would go on to become the now-legendary The Hoxton. More hotels followed in Holborn in London, in Paris and in Amsterdam, and now Pasricha has his sights set on the US, with The Hoxton to open new hotels in Williamsburg this summer, Portland and LA by the end of the year, and Chicago in 2019. The choice of destinations for these boutique hotels is shrewd, as they are some of the trendiest cities in the world. The Hoxton in Shoreditch pioneered the boutique hotel as a lifestyle establishment, and set the bar for many other boutique hotels across the globe.

Co-working and blockchain inform the direction of The Hoxton

Pasricha’s strength in the hotel business perhaps lies in his unconventional background. Before getting into hospitality, he owned a leather business and a media company, so he knows his way around a number of different industries. One way he sees his hotel group going in is the direction of co-working spaces. Speaking about potential developments, he said, “We’ve got a bunch of office spaces to move into with our developments. In Chicago and potentially San Francisco and in London we’ve got office space with our hotels, so we’re actively considering exploring, possibly, our own co-working brand. I don’t think we would be able to compete with some of the larger folks on the traditional co-working so, I think, given our experience in brands and our link to the hotel, I think we’ve got to find ways to integrate our brand and our hotel more closely, so we’re going to focus on how we can do that.”

One way of doing this would be to focus more on a co-living aspect of hotels, but he is also thinking about how digital developments in blockchain could bolster his business, especially in terms of the reservation systems. “I think you can’t ignore blockchains, so we’re actively trying to get our heads around what the interesting platforms or products are that can be created on the blockchain as a platform,” he says. “We think of our website not as an online booking engine but as an e-commerce platform.”

Owning and operating is the way forward for boutique hotels

While big name brands are favouring franchising and soft brands, Pasricha reckons that the strength of boutique hotels lies in the fact that they can own and operate their own buildings. “A big part of our strategy is to find these amazing buildings. So, the real estate depreciation isn’t our impact that we have as an operator or as a brand, once we’re opened, it’s an integral part of our model,” he says. “I believe that with brands like ours that are incredibly creative, very authentic, culturally connected, and community focused, you need to control every aspect of it. Our fear is we do not want to create a different collection of hotels that have an inconsistent brand message. Our belief is to really control the entire guest experience, we’ve got to control every aspect of it. And by nature, we restrict how many of these we could do.”

Let’s take a look at a few other projects currently underway by The Hoxton Hotels: