It’s no surprise to anyone in the hospitality industry that the COVID-19 pandemic amplified and accelerated changes in the lives and needs of our guests and consumers. With a long history of innovation and thinking outside the box, Sage Hospitality Group was well-positioned to adapt and evolve as needed to meet the challenges faced since the onset of the pandemic. Now poised for growth in 2022, Sage celebrates the innovations and firsts in the industry that have paved the way for the successful year ahead.
“After nearly 40 years in the business, it goes without saying that Sage has matured and changed in incredible ways throughout its history,” said Walter Isenberg, president and CEO of Sage Hospitality Group. “But the one thing that has always remained consistent in our company is the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of our people and the projects we work on. We’ve always believed in pushing boundaries and doing things just a little bit differently from everyone else. I’m incredibly proud of how far we’ve come since the company was founded and look forward to what 2022 and the coming years has in store for Sage.”
Launched in 1984 with a simple focus on third-party management contracts, Sage has grown into one of the most prominent, privately-held hospitality management, investment, and development companies in the industry. With a current portfolio of 60 hotels and 31 restaurants, bars and coffee shops across the U.S., Sage and its four companies work diligently every day to deliver on the promise of creating places that people go to, not through.
Redefining the Extended Stay Hotel
With the launch of the design-forward Catbird in summer 2021, an industry-disrupting take on the extended stay hotel, Sage brought the segment into the independent, lifestyle hotel space. Inspired by the feeling of home, Catbird blurs the lines between hotel and house through the use of adaptable spaces that foster a deeper sense of belonging for its guests and the community. Each of Sage Hospitality Group’s four companies – Sage Studio, Sage Hotel Management, Sage Restaurant Concepts (SRC) and Sage Investments – played a key role in bringing this first-of-its-kind concept to life. Catbird is poised to become a cornerstone brand concept for Sage. The truly innovative and unique design of the rooms is patent-pending, and the company intends to expand the brand into other key markets in the future.
Driving the Vision with our Brand Partners
Sage has long been a trusted partner for major hospitality brands like Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt and has built an incredible foundation of respect and trust with those organizations. As such, Sage has been given the opportunity to think outside the box and try things within the brand structure before other franchise partners. Sage was the first to bring the Courtyard by Marriott brand into to the world of urban, adaptive reuse when it redeveloped an abandoned department store in the heart of Denver into the brand’s first urban location. Sage also continues to be the only franchise partner in the world to operate a Ritz-Carlton property as a third-party manager.
Independent Food & Beverage
In the early 2000’s, Sage was a pioneer in launching a fully independent restaurant operation: Sage Restaurant Group. Now known as Sage Restaurant Concepts, the company has been an essential part of Sage’s overall strategy, creating and operating well-known concepts alongside some of Sage’s best-known hotel properties. Originally focused exclusively on proprietary concepts, over the last two years SRC has tripled the size of its portfolio, including taking on management of high-profile third-party restaurant brands by celebrity chefs including Michael Mina and Richard Sandoval. SRC opened four new proprietary concept locations in 2021 alone.
As SRC looks forward, the team is focused on their proprietary growth brands like modern steakhouse Urban Farmer, currently with 3 locations in Philadelphia, Denver and Portland, OR, and San Diego-born casual eatery Hello Betty, with the group’s next restaurant opening expected in Spring 2022. In addition, SRC is expanding into fully independent, non-hotel adjacent restaurants; the search for an independent location for the fourth Urban Farmer is already underway.
Notable Transactions
Creating beautiful places and exceptional experiences doesn’t just create value for our guests, it has also allowed Sage to create value for owners, partners, and investors. Many hotels have transacted in and out of Sage’s portfolio over the years, but a handful of them have set records for the highest per-key transaction in a particular market at the time of the sale. Notable record-setting sales included:
Halcyon, a hotel in Cherry Creek sold to Rockbridge Capital in spring 2019, less than three years after opening its doors in Denver. The sale of the 154-room property, which included the Halcyon brand and IP, set the record in Denver for the highest per-key transaction in the city’s history.
In 2014, Sage sold The Nines, Luxury Collection, Portland to Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, setting a record for a hotel transaction in that market. Sage developed the property in a historic building downtown, bringing a luxury destination to Portland. Pebblebrook retained Sage as the operator for The Nines, which Sage still operates to this day.
Perry Lane Hotel, which Sage helped develop and opened in June 2018, sold in mid-2021 to Wheelock Capital and was a major transaction in the Savannah market. After three years of successfully operating the property, Sage has remained both an equity partner and the operator of the property.
As the teams from Sage’s four companies – Sage Hotel Management, Sage Restaurant Concepts, Sage Studio and Sage Investments – look forward into 2022, they are eager to continue building on the legacy of innovation for which the company has become known. To learn more about Sage Hospitality Group’s companies and their growing portfolio of hotels and restaurants, visit sagehospitalitygroup.com.
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Company Updates