Ennismore Keeps Design In-House as It Opens 20 New Hotels in 2025

In only 13 years, Ennismore has grown from a single property to more than 170 hotels, and it has taken an unusual approach: keeping core operations like restaurant concepts, interior design, and digital marketing under its own roof rather than outsourcing to third parties.

The company, majority owned by Accor, says it will continue with the strategy as it plans to nearly double its hotel portfolio over the next several years — including opening more than 20 hotels and 35 restaurants this year.

Founder and co-CEO Sharan Pasricha said that Ennismore's in-house approach is critical to maintaining consistency as it expands beyond its origins in Western Europe.

Ennismore has over 120 properties under development:

• Australia will see three brand debuts: Mondrian Gold Coast (a luxury hotel), Hyde Perth (a bohemian-inspired hotel), and 25hours Hotel Sydney (a cinema-themed property in the former Olympia Theatre).

• Europe will get its first SLS property in Barcelona, featuring over 470 rooms and an undulating façade inspired by Mediterranean waves.

• Ennismore aims to resurrect the iconic Delano hotel in Miami Beach, which helped define South Beach's 1990s renaissance. The multi-year renovation of the 170-room Miami hotel, scheduled to open in late 2025, promises to maintain the original's Art Deco bones while updating its pool scene for the Instagram era. Last year, Ennismore relaunched the Delano brand with a property in Dubai.

• The Hoxton, Ennismore's first brand, continues its expansion with new properties in Florence (late-Renaissance palazzo), Edinburgh (11 connected Georgian townhouses), and Dublin (restoring the former Central Hotel and its Library Bar).

• Middle East development projects include multiple Rixos all-inclusive resorts in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, plus Mondrian Abu Dhabi and SLS Red Sea.

• Singapore will add a Mama Shelter (the brand's twentieth location globally) to the Orchard Road area.

• The company is in "active talks" to open properties in India and other new markets.

Don't Just Sell Rooms, Sell Stories

Pasricha emphasized that the success of lifestyle hotels hinges on three factors: creative storytelling, strategic space programming, and the ability to generate significant non-room revenue.

Ennismore properties derive "over 60% of revenue" from sources outside accommodations, he said. High gross margins have multi-year momentum and aren't driven by initial buzz for mostly young and new operations, he said.

Pasricha outlined to Skift the company's vertical integration strategy — including an internal design team and food-and-beverage team that helps generate "billions in revenue."

Other major hotel groups typically outsource the food-and-beverage offerings and design elements for rooms, marketing, and websites. That leads to inconsistent results, Pasricha said.

"Hotel brands need to sweat the details — from the paint colors to the playlist — if they want to create truly memorable experiences," he said.

Large hotel groups have previously cited the downsides of in-house design teams, such as higher fixed costs, reduced flexibility, and increased operational complexity, though some groups, like Minor Hotels, embrace the approach.

Competition is rising for lifestyle hotels. In the U.S. alone, the category accounts for 32% of open branded hotels, an increase of 26.3 percentage points of share since 2000, according to a 2023 report by JLL Hotels & Hospitality.

Digital Savvy for Branding

It will be tricky for Ennismore to maintain its cool factor while scaling up. Each property will need to feel distinctive and locally relevant while still fitting within a brand's broader narrative.

"What works in Dubai almost certainly is not going to work in Rome," Pasricha said, critiquing the cookie-cutter approach of larger hotel group competitors. 

The founder said that once brands have distinct "swim lanes," in-house technology can help amplify marketing and target potential customers most likely to like any given brand.

Ennismore's tech investments suggest they're thinking beyond just physical spaces. The company's e-commerce group processes "hundreds of millions" in bookings, Pasricha said.

The company has also integrated AI-powered tools from Stripe for analyzing customer behavior. And it's testing new tools for better matching its advertising to the most relevant customers.

"We spend a disproportionate amount of our time optimizing our websites and really thinking about how can we behave like a smart e-commerce business," Pasricha said. "Everything that goes into how you find our site, how I convert site visitors, how do I identify customers that will deliver large lifetime customer value, how do I optimize the conversion rates on the e-commerce fundamentals, and so on."

Ennismore's Brands, Explained

Ennismore seeks to establish itself as the group to beat in lifestyle hotels and hospitality innovation. Here’s a rundown of its major brands.

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