Boutique hotel companies that own and manage their hotels have found the most success in helping their teams understand each other and aligning their goals.

During the online 2021 Boutique Hotel Investment Conference hosted by the Boutique Lifestyles Leaders Association, Ari Heckman, co-founder and CEO of Ash NYC, said his branded and creative team members are the dreamers and sometimes have wishes and objectives that are operationally challenging, but he always tries to get the operational team to understand that side of the business.

"I've always tried to get both sides to see each other's point of view, as any good conflict negotiator aims to do," he said.

Heckman said it is important to find compromises that allow the two teams to execute the greater vision of the company without a "cost or labor efficiency challenge to the operations team."

Rob Blood, founder and president of Lark Hotels, said his company achieves the best results "when there's harmony between owning and operating."

Lark designs, develops and manages all of its 32 properties and has full ownership in 17 of the hotels, which makes it difficult to sometimes see perspectives from each side of the business, but "they all work together, and they have to," he said.

Blood said the COVID-19 pandemic is an example of when conflicts can appear between ownership and management.

"Ownership wants to keep the hotels afloat and management wants to get their fees paid, and finding the right balance there was tricky but ultimately worked out fine," he said.

The job of an owner is to create a good underlying platform, which has helped Lark get through those moments of divergence, Blood said.

"If I am doing a good job as an owner, then I have given my managers a great base level," he said, adding that "the lowest common denominator is you've got to have a great hotel," which can't exist without a great management team.

When it comes to growth, Lark looks to make sure it has the right pieces in place, Blood said.

"We're not big fans of the growth for growth's sake," he added.

The company has grown its portfolio in the last year and a half, and that growth was possible by putting fundamental building blocks together "to be able to scale," he said.

One example is the company slowly grew its core team of 35 people.

The capital had to be there to grow, which Blood said Lark could improve upon and is looking to grow further.

"Our next step is to form the Lark capital arm and raise some more money so we can be more opportunistic as things come around," he said.

The hotel industry has been one of the hardest-hit industries by the pandemic, which caused some shifts in how hotels operate, but not all changes will be permanent, Heckman said.

"Every pandemic has ended at some point, and people more or less went back to how it was before," he said. "I'm not saying there aren't changes that are going to be permanent, but I do think people overemphasized because it was something right in front of them."

Heckman said one of the biggest lessons he's learned from the pandemic is how much he likes to travel, eat out and go to hotel bars in different cities.

"I think it's a reaffirmation of why we're doing this in the first place," he said. "The people who are pivoting toward permanent sanitization regimes with personless entry and all that stuff are doing it at their own peril because I think people want connection. Otherwise, we shouldn't be in the business."