LOS ANGELES — A portfolio of 30 hotels and restaurants might not be "small" in the traditional sense, but Maverick Hotels & Restaurants CEO and founder Bob Habeeb said he likes to be very intentional about keeping his company a certain size in an era when hotel operators are turning to mergers and acquisitions in a never-ending quest for scale.
"My motive when I started Maverick was not necessarily 'Bigger is better.' In fact, we're bigger than I expected to be," Habeeb said in an interview with HNN at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit. "It's all about quality. Doing a quality job for the assets we manage, and putting together a team that makes it a great day to go to work."
That doesn't mean his company has completely eschewed growth. Maverick has grown at a pace of roughly 10 properties a year since 2020. The company was founded in 2018.
But Habeeb said his focus is not on buying or merging.
"A small portfolio, maybe, but following the Aimbridge model ... that's not something we want," he said.
Habeeb said Maverick instead prioritizes direct relationships with owners and "really fun projects."
He said more often he's hearing from hotel investors who simply feel lost in the shuffle working with large hotel management companies.
"I've heard a lot of hotel owners say, 'We're really not happy with our mega-company,'" Habeeb said. "And we're small; we're niche; we're flexible. We're creative."
Remaining small is not without its challenges, as growing hotel operations is often driven by the benefits of economies of scale and added buying power to keep costs down.
Habeeb said the biggest negative impacts of staying small for Maverick are felt on the development side of the business rather than operations.
"With the capital markets, [staying small] made it more difficult, but we've been able to get everything done," he said.
Habeeb said the nimbleness of the company has helped in adapting operations, particularly in light of labor shortages, which he expects to be the norm "for some time to come."
"We've been blessed because we're young and dynamic," he said. "I say we're a post-COVID management company. Our DNA is welded with the COVID experience so we don't really have a traditional office. We're very entrepreneurial, and the people who work for us have a great deal of autonomy."
He said the ability to provide employees a greater level of flexibility will be key for all hotel management platforms.
"It's not trying to fit all the square pegs into round holes," Habeeb said. "We do job tailoring where you don't have schedules. It's just about figuring out what you're really, really good at then exploit that to the max."
Maverick Projects
Habeeb said several properties within Maverick's portfolio hold exciting potential.
The Sable at Navy Pier on the Lake Michigan waterfront in Chicago — a hotel that is in Hilton's Curio Collection and features "the world's largest rooftop bar" — is "a killer hotel doing really well," he said.
He said the company is also "totally reinventing" the Hilton Chicago/Oak Brook Hills Resort in Oak Brook, Illinois.
"This is our 'skunk works' project for the year," Habeeb said. "If you took a traditional golf resort and asked yourself 'What will this business look like in 20 years?' then future-proof. We're going through that, and the idea process is really, really fun."