New England travelers are well-acquainted with Lark Hotels, thanks to unique properties that reflect the soul and personality of their locations, from the glamorous Gilded, a hotel in Newport, Rhode Island, to Plum Island’s beachy and breezy Blue – Inn on the Beach.
Now, Lark has expanded, forming a joint venture with hotel brand and management company Life House to form Lark Hospitality. The new venture encompasses all Lark Hotels and Life House-branded hotels, which include properties in Denver and Nantucket, as well as dozens of additional properties that Life House manages.
The combination of assets, which includes hotels, bars, and restaurants, has doubled Lark’s footprint, adding more than 50 properties to its North American portfolio. Now, instead of operating mainly in New England, the new Lark Hospitality will operate in 27 states and two countries.
“It enables us to bring what we’re passionate about to more people and have greater resources to do that,” says Rob Blood, founder of Lark Hotels.
The past several years in the hospitality world have been marked by consolidation and acquisition. There was the mega merger between Aimbridge Hospitality and Interstate Hotels and Resorts; Hyatt buying Standard International, the parent company of The Standard and Bunkhouse Hotel brands; and Hilton acquiring Graduate Hotels.
“What was interesting to me in all of that, was it often was big brands consuming small, cool brands,” Blood says. However, brand consolidation and acquisitions often result in unique experiences becoming “homogenous and less meaningful.”
“I have, historically, really no interest in that,” he says. “I feel really strongly about the idea that independent hotels and really bespoke properties add a lot of value to the richness of life.”
That’s why Blood believes this joint venture is a good fit.
Lark Hotels has always been synonymous with travel experiences that have a personality, voice, and point of view. Far from indistinct, cookie-cutter lodging that could be in Any City, USA, Lark properties are like individualized fingerprints rooted in a strong sense of place, from the funky, artsy Blind Tiger in Asheville, North Carolina, to The Merchant, a luxury, boutique hotel housed in one of Salem’s historic, federal style buildings.
The same has been true for Life House.
“Life House, really for the last five years, has been the primary competitor of Lark Hotels in the space of independent-spirited, smaller, sub-100 key hotels,” he says.
So it’s no wonder, then, that the two companies sought to join forces and continue to nurture the cool, individualistic characteristics that make Lark and Life House properties what they are.
Among them are hotels that had been managed by Life House, like Hotel Ella in Austin, Texas, which is housed in a historic mansion and boasts elevated Texas cuisine at its own Goodall’s Kitchen, and Anna & Bel, a hotel that’s also home to chef Tyler Akin’s Mediterranean-inspired restaurant, Bastia, in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia.
“Part of the Lark mission is to find moments of surprise and delight and go above and beyond,” Blood says.
That will continue to be true, even as Lark continues to expand. In March, it opened The Painted Lady, a boutique hotel in Birmingham, Alabama, and is working on a new hotel in the Garden District of New Orleans, Blood says. It also just opened the Interstate Inn, a remodeled interstate motel that now features 33 art-infused rooms and a restaurant helmed by the James Beard Award-Winning chef, Stephan Pyles.
Through all the growth, though, Lark aims to remain true to itself. “Lark is a homegrown company,” Blood says. “It’s been a passion project and something that started with an idea 12 years ago.”