Lane Hospitality, a Chicago-based hotel and resort management company, announced it’s rebranding to Spire Hospitality. When you consider that the Lane family sold the firm to AWH Partners a little over a year ago, the timing makes sense. “While the Lane family was a great supporter of us, but they just didn’t have the desire to keep on the holdings together,” says Bill DeForrest, president and CEO, of Spire. “So they were looking for a way to exit the hospitality management business that would also build on the success the team has had over the years.”
“There’s always some change in focus when a new owner comes in, but in our case it was more of an enhancement of what we’ve already done.” DeForrest says the rebranding helps position the company as a leading provider of third-party management services for hotel owners and investors. “The concept of spire as the peak of a building speaks not only to what we’ve accomplished but where we’re going and what we want to do.” He says Spire will continue to be a third-party management company, and will continue to partner with its AWH capital partners to help invest in hospitality related real estate and drive the value of that investment.
“We’ll continue to look at secondary markets, which are places we’ve had a lot of success over the years,” says DeForrest. “But we’ll also look at primary markets such as New York and Chicago.” He also notes that Lane had been very active in the branded space over the years, and hadn’t done enough with independent properties. “I think there’s an opportunity for us to do more and we’ve added some expertise to our team to do this.”
“There’s a lot of really good hospitality management firms out and we compete well with the best in the business.” Toward the change, Spire has launched a new website and is gearing up to move to new offices to accommodate its expansion plans.
