Sharan Pasricha is having too much fun. The self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades—he had a media startup, ran a factory, and dabbled in distressed debt private equity—has found his true calling as a hotelier. “I’ve always had a passion for real estate. I love neighborhoods and am a curious traveler, so getting into the hotel business combines all my passions,” says Pasricha, founder and CEO of Ennismore, a London-based global hospitality company and curator of unique properties and experiences.
In 2012, he bought the six-year-old Hoxton, one of the first boutique hotels in the upcoming East London neighborhood of Shoreditch. “It was quite novel when it was first opened, and it was founded on this premise between essentially a dichotomy of luxury and budget,” explains Pasricha. As the area gentrified and Shoreditch became “uber-hip,” the hotel and its public spaces became relevant, he says. When the original owners put the fledgling property up for sale, he jumped at the chance to see what he could do with it.
Loving learning the business—“sitting in the back office, attending daily revenue, housekeeping, and operations meetings”—he rethought what Hoxton 2.0 meant, and what was relevant in 2012 versus in 2006. “As a result, we morphed from this notion of budget to value,” he explains, and started focusing on creating “culturally relevant public spaces,” and establishing “deep connections with the neighborhood and its locals.”
Great success followed, as did a second fashionable Hoxton in Holborn, this one in a former office building (the first was in a warehouse). “I had to learn how to be a developer, which I’d never done before. I spent two years living, effectively, in this building site. I made some horrendous decisions, made some pretty good ones, but we’ve never looked back,” he says, adding that the hotel hasn’t dropped below 90 percent occupancy since opening. “It was a fairly sleepy neighborhood, and we’d like to think we helped in its gentrification. If your public areas are featured in most of the area’s commercial real estate brochures, it’s probably a sign that you’re part of the fabric of the neighborhood.”
Hoxton 2.0
Most recently, the Hoxton opened in Amsterdam, a renovation of five townhouses (one was once the former mayor’s residence) on one of the city’s most historic canals. But the buildings weren’t the only challenge. The idea of hotel lobbies being a hub, “integrating within the local community, is not part of Dutch culture—locals don’t go and hang out in hotels,” he explains. “There was an element of ‘build it and they will come.’”
Yet the brand’s two most ambitious projects are set to come online this year. First up, a three-year restoration of a 16th-century building in Paris, featuring “172 rooms, amazing event spaces, a beautiful speakeasy library bar, an incredible restaurant with a conservatory, and two beautiful courtyards.” The second, a 175-key property in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, couldn’t be any more different, he says. Housed in a historic water tower-making factory, it will boast three restaurants and five bars including a street-level bleacher garden, a rooftop bar, and a lobby restaurant with an open kitchen housed in the site’s original 100-year-old carriage house. “We’ve designed the hotel to be very porous to the community, almost designing it to bring the outside in,” he explains. “Williamsburg is like Shoreditch, and we feel completely connected to this neighborhood: it’s fiercely independent, incredibly authentic, feels like a village. It’s an incredibly dynamic, versatile real estate market.”
Further down the line, Hoxtons are planned for downtown Los Angeles in a 1920s building, which will feature the brand’s first rooftop pool, and in Chicago. Pasricha also has his eye on Austin, Nashville, and Washington, DC, as well as a few European markets. But growth is organic, he says. “We have no ambitions to build 50 hotels. All of our hotels take painstakingly long. They’re curated and crafted. We don’t have brand standards. We tend to celebrate buildings that are quirky or sometimes difficult. We’ve got to connect with the neighborhood and with the building before we even start to get excited.”
Counter Culture
The Hoxton spaces are at once eclectic and comfortable, welcoming but exciting. There’s a laidback feeling that’s easier said than done that beckon locals and guests alike. “You create spaces that you would want to hang out in; warm and inviting spaces that [feel like] an extension of somebody’s living room,” he says. “We spend a lot of time thinking about the design and the space layout. Our reception desks are always off-center, to the side. The bar merges with the restaurant, which merges with our coffee station, which merges with our lounge. We have a very easygoing approach, where you can sit and eat anywhere within the lobby, so you can have the restaurant food on the couch, curled up by the fire, if that’s what you want to do,” he explains. “Of course, most of the designs are inspired by the buildings and the neighborhoods we’re in—that’s a big part of our design philosophy.”
Smartly, Pasricha has collaborated with Soho House for the design of the public spaces and F&B operations, but moving forward, he’s looking to find other collaborators (like they do now for rooms and architecture). As the company grows, so does his in-house team of more than 30, who handle “soup-to-nuts,” from branding and graphics, to digital and FF&E. “Not only do we own the real estate and operate it, but we also design each and every one of the spaces ourselves. It allows us to visualize the space and to use areas that others might not see or capture,” he says.
No detail is too small to Pasricha, who is involved in everything from uniform selection to the right coffee roaster. “As my team will tell you, I am a bit of a control freak, but in a good way,” he says. “They do a very good job of telling me where I should absolutely not be sticking my nose, but I love the crazy process of space planning, of interior design, of concepting food and beverage. I’ve got people on my team that are way better than me in these areas, but that’s what keeps it real, keeps it fresh, keeps it enjoyable.”
Even if spaces are beautifully designed, Pasricha says it is all about hiring the right people from a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. “There’s been a lack of innovation in the world of hospitality over the last two decades, and we’ve got a fighting chance of really innovating guest experiences by looking outside at other industries,” he says, adding that he passes out his business cards at unconventional places, from bus stops to supermarkets, trains, planes, and stores. “It’s difficult to train inherent hospitality,” he adds. “People either genuinely care about how people feel after an experience, or they are transactional about it.”
Branching Out
Hoxton isn’t the only thing keeping Pasricha busy. He recently bought the Gleneagles hotel, a storied luxury country estate and golf destination in Scotland. “I’ve had the good fortune of being there as a guest half a dozen times, and I’ve sat at the bar and thought, if I had the opportunity to ever own this place, what would I do with it. I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be reality.
“All of a sudden, we had two very distinct brands. One is this hyper-local collection of hotels, inspired by amazing neighborhoods, that was accessible, somewhat affordable, but with international food and beverage and cultural programming. The other is this iconic institution that’s 95 years old, that’s got 900 employees on 1,000 acres in the Scottish Highlands. What we’re really good at is taking things that are broken and fixing them.” With the help of David Collins Studio, Timorous Beasties, Macaulay Sinclair, and Goddard Littlefair he and the in-house team are in the midst of restoring it to its former 1920s glory. “The brand became incredibly serious over the years, and we’re on this ambitious journey to bring back a bit of fun.” That includes reopening the American Bar, which at some point was made into a luggage store, with its original fireplace and details, as well as the Glendevon room, a curved space with views of the Strathearn Valleys that formerly was only used as event space. He’s also revamping the F&B, as well as positioning the hotel not just as a golf resort but an outdoor haven. The goal is a destination that both excites longtime guests and attracts new visitors.
Gleneagles may be a jumping off point for his next great idea. He bought a farm nearby, with nascent plans to try a luxury outdoor experiential camp version of Gleneagles. “There’s going to be a big shift to experience-based hospitality, where people want to spend more time on experiences, spend more time outdoors, being one with nature,” he says.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Pasricha also recently launched budget hotel brand NoCo, in response to developers who wanted to bring the Hoxton to markets where the numbers just didn’t work. “We’ve taken the best of the Hoxton, the toys on the ground floor, redesigned bedrooms, and we’ve reimagined it for $90 a night,” he says. The plan is to open two to three a year, mostly in the UK and Europe, and possibly the States, with the first debuting toward the end of 2018.
Whether it’s a 225-square-foot room with a tight FF&E budget, or a 2,500-square-foot presidential suite, “we’re in the business of showing people a good time, connecting culturally with the neighborhood, and selling sleep,” he says. “It’s not rocket science, but I feel to some extent it’s up to groups like us—the fiercely independent companies that operate outside of the rules of hospitality, that allow themselves the creative freedom and the ability to partner with incredibly bright, talented people in some of the most exciting neighborhoods in the world—to create experiences like no other.”
