DENVER — Life House, a tech-enabled brand and management company, has acquired the management contracts of IMPRINT Hospitality’s independent hotel portfolio, which comprises an array of properties across the West Coast. The transaction represents Life House’s first M&A transaction, with several more expected to close later in 2021.
Life House was founded in 2017 by a boutique hotel and technology team and has reimagined the complex hotel tech stack into a holistic hotel operating system designed to increase revenues and reduce expenses for independent hotel owners. The company is backed by travel-tech and private equity investors including Thayer Ventures, JLL, Tiger Global, Rocket Internet, Trinity Ventures, David Hamamoto, and Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, among others. The company currently has 27 hotels signed, open, or under development—12 of which are branded Life House.
The IMPRINT Hospitality portfolio of independent properties includes The Historic Taos Inn in Taos, New Mexico; Casa Secoya on the banks of the Russian River in Sonoma County, California; and two Salida, Colorado, properties: Loyal Duke Lodge and Salida Inn & Monarch Suites. Additional properties are expected to be announced at a later date. The hotels will be operating with their existing independent branding, with Life House actively exploring opportunities to reposition select properties to one of its current or future lifestyle brands.
IMPRINT Hospitality was founded by hotel industry veterans Alexandra Walterspiel and Matthew Seim. Following the close of the transaction, IMPRINT’s founders will join Life House’s advisory board and will remain long-term owners of the real estate through various affiliated investment vehicles.
“We are pleased to have identified a like-minded and forward-thinking partner in Life House who has the ability to materially improve the performance of our portfolio,” said Alexandra Walterspiel, managing partner of IMPRINT Hospitality.
“As we’ve become more familiar with Life House and their value proposition, it’s clear they are the right partner to manage our unique hotels and, in so doing, providing our team with additional bandwidth to focus on future real estate transactions in our target markets,” added Matt Seim, managing partner of IMPRINT Hospitality.
The deal is part of Life House’s West Coast expansion and follows the opening of Life House Lower Highlands in Denver in November. With five additional deals presently under contract across the West Coast, Life House continues to rapidly expand its network of independent and boutique properties in all corners of the United States.
“We are thrilled to finalize this transaction with IMPRINT Hospitality and their experienced management team and happy to be able to help solve problems for hotel owners and our peers in the industry during these difficult times,” said Rami Zeidan, founder and CEO of Life House. “Matt and Alex have been great to work with and we are excited to expand our presence in Colorado following the opening of our Denver hotel while entering strategic submarkets in California and New Mexico.”
After its recent $30 million financing round, Life House and its partners are actively seeking additional M&A opportunities across the independent hotel space. Life House is positioned to acquire asset-light management businesses from owner-operators who seek to focus their time and energy on real estate ownership, in which context Life House can create a liquidity event alongside adding incremental value to the real estate through its management platform.
The transaction between Life House and IMPRINT Hospitality was facilitated by Destination Capital, a Denver-based real estate advisory firm led by Bryan Auchterlonie.
