Dreamscape Hospitality has added 22 hotels since launching last April, with 10 more expected to join the portfolio through September. Led by Adam Patenaude, a former Aimbridge executive who serves as president of the company, the third-party management firm recently launched a new luxury & lifestyle division.
“There’s been this demographic shift with travelers, where you have affluent millennials and Gen-Zers with more disposable income who are looking for slightly different things when they’re traveling,” said Patenaude. “They’re looking for a different social atmosphere, unique design elements, elevated food and beverage, sustainability and wellness. I want us to become a premium operator in this space, and it’s definitely one of the pillars of our growth strategy.”
The company brought in industry veteran Matt Greene as EVP to lead the division.
“It takes a special skill set to operate in that realm and in that vertical,” Patenaude noted. “Having known Matt for years, I knew he was the perfect fit to bring in to help us launch this division because you can’t operate these hotels the same way that you do some of the branded hotels.”
The Garden District Hotel is
one of three boutique hotels
the company will have in New Orleans.
He said that a significant portion of the company’s pipeline is made up of luxury & lifestyle hotels. Two of the division’s boutique properties are already open in New Orleans’ Garden District—The Blackbird Hotel and The Garden District Hotel—with another under construction.
“All three are heavy on design, with cool food and beverage,” said Patenaude. “There’s a great pool at The Blackbird, and we recently opened a resort-style pool at The Garden District Hotel.”
The company was born from a networking session between Patenaude and Eric Birnbaum, founder/chairman/CEO, Dreamscape Companies.
“What started as a casual social chat to get to know each other really evolved over about six months to the point that we were trading business plans back and forth about how this could work,” Patenaude recalled. “We realized we were much aligned in doing this, so we both took a leap of faith and started it up.”
While serving as the management firm’s parent company, Dreamscape Companies has no involvement with its day-to-day operations.
“It’s very much separate and distinct, and that’s very intentional,” said Patenaude. “Obviously, I spend a lot of time with Eric in New York, and we’ve got a great team in New York and resources that we can lean into.”
Patenaude has built a team of industry veterans, including some former Aimbridge colleagues. He said that “the people that we hire and the people that work alongside us are our number-one asset.”
The company’s current portfolio is primarily based in the southern part of the U.S., with hotels in Ohio and Colorado, as well. The firm recently added the Hyatt Regency, Houston West, its largest hotel with 400 rooms.
“It’s in a great location in the Energy Corridor section of Houston, surrounded by a ton of big oil and gas companies,” said Patenaude. “It’s going to go under a full PIP starting sometime next year.”
With more than 50 hotels in the pipeline, Patenaude said the company could double—or even triple—its portfolio in the next 12 months.
“From a geographical standpoint, we’ll be on both coasts, and we’re going to venture into the Midwest,” he added. “And we’ll have some additional growth in the South. We’ll probably be nationwide in the next two to three months.”
Patenaude said that the company’s short-term growth plan is “bringing good deals to our partners and finding unique value-add assets that that our capital partners can invest in. We have the ability, given our balance sheet, to invest lower equity, but we’re not going to look to buy hotels as a strategy.”
In the long term, he said he wouldn’t rule out a strategic M&A consolidation “if it makes sense.”
“By no means are we out there looking for that, but it has to make sense from a geographic and vertical standpoint, and, obviously, the people component to any M&A is probably the most valuable piece of it all,” he said.
