Bookings are brisk at the Moor, a four-suite house-hotel on Canal Street in New Orleans that opened during the Essence Music Festival last summer. It’s the first property by Damon Lawrence and Marcus Carey, up-and-coming hoteliers who launched Homage Hospitality to cater to and celebrate African American travelers, a community that is too often ignored in the hotel space but who spent $63 billion in travel in 2018, according to Mandala Research. “From the artwork to the music to the magazines in the rooms, it’s all black inspired,” Lawrence says of the Moor’s Moroccan influences.
Hospitality is new to Carey, who started out in private equity and venture capital in New York, but he always had an interest in hotels. In fact, he was 12 when he was first awestruck by the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, Michigan, but even then, he realized that “our community, our people, weren’t quite represented in the management and ownership ranks,” he says. Lawrence, however, cut his teeth working the front desk at Donovan House Hotel in Washington, DC his senior year of college when it was under hotelier Jason Pomeranc’s lifestyle Thompson portfolio, before moving into management positions with the Ritz-Carlton and InterContinental. “I had every intention of being a lawyer,” he says, “but I fell in love with this industry so much I put things off.” He even briefly ran Hausotel in 2007, a vacation rental company he developed in Southern California before the likes of Airbnb. But after a short run, he shut it down to focus on Homage, named because Lawrence wanted to pay tribute to the black-only hotels of the ’50s and ’60s. They were the closest thing he could find as inspiration when he googled to see if “there was someone else who looked like me creating boutique properties.”
Carey and Lawrence both attended Howard University in DC (but at different times) and met in 2016 at a party in Oakland, California, where they both had settled. There, Lawrence’s friend was wearing a shirt with an Homage logo. “He didn’t have any hotels, but he already had merch,” Carey says. “The universe sent him. We’ve been off to the races ever since.”
Lawrence and Carey spent the next two years getting to know each other, developing their brand, and wooing investors, all while moonlighting for Uber and Lyft to make ends meet. Frustrated in finding that perfect bigger deal, an investor offered up some advice: Do something smaller just to get the brand and the name out there. Thanks to Zillow, they bought a nearly century-old Spanish-style house along a trolley car stop in New Orleans, which became the Moor. “[The city] has always been the perfect start for so many other things that are important to our community,” Lawrence says, noting its jazz roots and inclusive culture. “It was impactful in so many ways that we were able to go there to grow this brand nationally.”
Alongside Chimene Jackson, the company’s chief innovation officer, Lawrence leads the creative side while Carey handles the numbers. In preparing to launch the Moor, however, they worked side by side, painting walls, swapping out light fixtures, and combing through thrift stores for furnishings, accessories, and artwork. “We learned how to work together,” says Lawrence, who moved to New Orleans for three months to be onsite. “We sat in a room until three o’clock in the morning trying to get everything done because we already had reservations lined up.” Indeed, the Moor’s four suites were quickly booked six months out. Black travelers made up about 95 percent of their first guests, but the mix has since become far more diverse. “We don’t want to be boxed-in—the black hotel or the black hoteliers,” Lawrence says. “We want to get the credibility from everyone.”
With proof the concept works, they’re doubling down on New Orleans with a 100-room dual-branded site (slated to debut in 2022) comprising the Freeman, an homage to the Tremé neighborhood where freed slaves were first able to purchase property, and the Masters, a music-themed experience. The duo also has the 94-room Homage Oakland and 117-key Homage Los Angeles, scheduled for a 2020 and 2021 opening, respectively, on the boards.
Celebrating African American culture while welcoming all is a fine line, but they believe their message will continue to resonate. “We speak with our own voice, and we are at a place in society where everyone understands that,” Lawrence says.
Adds Carey: “Value creation can be unleashed if we figure out how to start speaking the same language to one another and see value across color lines, familial lines, religious lines. We start to see people for who they are and let them be who they are and still create. That’s what my journey in this company is about: Kicking open a door and making sure it stays open so more can come after us.”
Hear more on HD’s “What I’ve Learned” podcast.
The four-suite Moor house hotel in New Orleans pairs original elements with contemporary details
African American-inspired art and accessories complement original exposed brick in a bedroom
A residentially inspired living room in one of the four suites at the Moor
A four-poster bed marks a bedroom, complete with thrift store finds
Lawrence and Carey on the balcony of the Moor, a Spanish-style house they found on Zillow
Photography by Snap Real Estate Photography and courtesy of Homage Hospitality
