A desire for more control over its hotel portfolio and family history led Bentley Legacy Holdings to expand beyond ownership to operations.
Bentley Legacy already self-managed some of its owned hotels, so the natural move was to expand its management to the company's full portfolio, said Lisa Holman, partner and chief financial officer.
“We’re very active owners, and it made more sense for us to have more control over the management,” she said. “It’s where my family background is [as] third-generation hotel operators. I think it’s time, and it makes sense with the investment arm and having the management piece of it to really give a full complement of an offering.”
Bentley Legacy was founded in 2013 by Les Bentley, who co-founded Aimbridge Hospitality and was also previously president of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. He runs the company along with his four daughters, one of whom is Holman.
Bentley formed Pendant Capital in joint venture through his company with David Capps in January 2023 as an investment vehicle for the family office.
In April, Bentley Legacy hired Matt Berge to run the management arm of the company. He most recently worked as the senior vice president of operations at Aimbridge Hospitality. He also happens to be Holman’s brother-in-law. The company also hired Ginger van Nest, formerly of Aimbridge and Hyatt Hotels Corp., as senior vice president of commercial services.
Bentley Legacy isn’t looking to branch into third-party hotel operations, Holman said. The team likes being owner-operators because of the alignment it creates. Investors want to know that they’re coming in with the same goals that Bentley Legacy has.
Having ownership paired with operations makes sense for the investors who work with Bentley Legacy, said Capps, president and CEO of Pendant Capital.
“We’re fiduciaries for that,” he said. “We can impact change right away as opposed to having to go through a third party where a lot of them are getting bigger and doing all this [mergers and acquisitions] stuff.”
With that approach in mind, Bentley Legacy is taking a step back to focus on its strengths — finding good investment opportunities and managing those properties, he said.
The goal, Holman said, is to further grow Bentley Legacy's owned and operated hotel portfolio now that it has the management piece in place. That includes pursuing different types of hotels. The company has approval with Marriott International and Hilton, and there’s also interest in owning and operating more independent hotels.
“We also really love the independent space as well because it’s just so nimble,” she said. “You can do whatever, as an investor, you feel like you need to do in order to improve your guest experience and your owner experience. That’s been a really fun part for us as well.”
Within its portfolio of seven hotels, Bentley Legacy has mostly independent properties, such as the 48-room Senza Hotel in Napa, California, and the 180-room La Fonda on the Plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she said. The company recently closed on the 126-room Raphael Hotel in Kansas City that’s part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection. Only one of its hotels is third-party-managed, but it is going through the sales process.
When it comes to adding hotels to the portfolio, Bentley Legacy has to be opportunistic around deals it can execute on, Capps said. There are so many factors at play, such as seller expectations and financing.
The company’s acquisition of the Raphael Hotel is a good example as it’s a special asset that’s in a good market and has been around for more than 100 years, he said.
“We’re looking for things that are long-term and have some staying power,” Capps said. “They’re well-located in good markets — high-barrier-to-entry markets — and things that have some opportunistic spin on it.”
There are ways Bentley Legacy can add operational value to new additions, he said. That could be through capital expenditures or its own management if the seller is not a career hotelier.
The company currently is working on a hotel deal in Bozeman, Montana, with a developer, Capps said. Markets like Bozeman are difficult to get into, and rates are high during the peak summer months.
“That’s another market that’s taken 10 years to get to this point on the site,” he said. “[The developer] has had this site for a long time.”
The developer is the most prolific developer in the market and has built other hotels and condos locally, he said. The 120-key Hotel Bozeman will be an Autograph Collection hotel with branded residences in the city’s downtown. It’s set to open in 2026.
The resort market on the Gulf Coast is another high-barrier market, and Bentley Legacy is working on a deal there as well, Capps said.
“We’re not going to do 20 deals a year. We’ll do two, three, four,” he said. “We’re going to be picky and go after the assets that we want to own a long time and where we can create value, and there’s a number of those that we’re working through right now.”