Why Every Boutique Hotel Founder Eventually Sells

Skift Take Asset-light lets boutique hotel brands grow without owning the real estate. It also leaves behind exactly what the big hotel companies want to buy: the brand. Sharan Pasricha founded Ennismore in London in 2011 and bought The Hoxton a year later. At the time, it was a single hotel in Shoreditch, opened by Pret a Manger co-founder Sinclair Beecham. Pasricha turned it into one of the defining lifestyle hotel brands of its generation. In 2021, he merged Ennismore with Accor’s lifestyle business, keeping a one-third stake while Accor took two-thirds. The combined company now has roughly 200 hotels across 16 brands. Accor owns about 62% today and has hired Goldman Sachs and three other banks to explore a New York listing, with analyst valuations ranging from $3.4 billion to $5.8 billion. Pasricha also runs a much smaller company, Estelle Community, which owns and operates three properties in England: Maison Estelle in Mayfair, Estelle Manor in Oxfordshire, and Celeste in Notting Hill. The contrast is useful. Pasricha bought The Hoxton, scaled it, and eventually sold control to a global hotel company. Estelle has taken the opposite