Blank Rome partners and Hospitality Practice co-chairs Christy L. Reuter and David A. Sudeck and partner Mark S. Adams will serve as featured speakers at the Boutique & Luxury Lodging Association’s (“BLLA”) 2026 Boutique Hotel Investment Conference, being held in New York, New York, on Wednesday June 3, 2026, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with a cocktail reception to follow. Blank Rome is pleased to be a sponsor of the Conference.
About the Program
The listening bar. The sauna. The lobby that never empties. Boutique hotels have always known that the most valuable square footage isn't a suite, it’s the space where culture happens. People building, financing, and operating the next generation of boutique gather at the Conference to ask what it means to invest in a place that doesn’t just host culture. It creates it. Speakers include leaders across the entire hospitality ecosystem—from legal and finance to real estate, design, food & beverage, and technology, the boutique ecosystem in full.
About the Sessions
10:05–10:20 a.m.: The Management Agreement Decoded
Panelists:
- Mark Adams, Partner, Hospitality and Business Litigation, Blank Rome
- Irina Zavina, Founder of Haskil Partners
11:45 a.m.–12:15 p.m.: Emerging Markets and Opportunities
The investors waiting for calm may be waiting a long time. The ones paying attention are already moving. Secondary cities and overlooked resort markets are generating the kind of interest that overexposed destinations stopped producing years ago. The geography of opportunity has shifted, and it rewards the developer willing to look before the consensus catches up. Repositioning undervalued assets, building where the fundamentals are strong but capital hasn't arrived yet—that gap is where the interesting work happens.
This session gets into where those markets actually are right now, how to assess long-term value in regions still finding their footing, and what it takes to move first without moving blind. Local knowledge, the right partnerships, a capital stack that works when conventional equity won’t show up. Wellness and community programming are reshaping what gets built and where. The best opportunities rarely announce themselves. That’s the point.
Panelists:
- Christy Reuter, Real Estate Partner & Hospitality Co-Chair, Blank Rome
- Ernest Lee, Chief Commercial Officer, EOS Hospitality
- Richard Born, Owner, BD Hotels
- Deniz Dorbek, Regulus Collective
5:35–6:05 p.m.: Debt & Equity Investment for Boutique Hotels
Boutique hotels have always asked investors to believe in something that doesn’t fit neatly into a model. It sits at the intersection of creative vision and complex stakeholder relationships. This session examines that balance from both a capital and risk perspective. Panelists will explore what today’s equity investors are actually looking for and how to structure deals that preserve creative control.
The discussion will also confront where boutique projects most often break down—disputes among investors, ownership groups, operators, branding partners, F&B providers, labor, and regulatory agencies—and how those conflicts play out in arbitration, litigation, and ultimately, settlement. Contractual structures can either prevent these disputes or fuel them, and the panel will draw on real-world experience to show how stakeholders can protect asset value.
Panelists:
- David Sudeck, Real Estate Partner & Hospitality Co-Chair, Blank Rome
- Joe LeVine, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Mercer Street Partners
- Spenser Apramian, VP, Investments, Bridgeton
- Laura Rapaport, Founder and CEO, North Bridge
Other sessions include:
- Keynote: The Store That Thinks Like a Hotel
- Hospitality Without Borders: Designing for Work, Life & Community
- Reporting: Boutique Hotel Capital Market Overview
- Scaling Without Losing the Plot
- Branded Residences
- The Other Side of Hospitality: Food & Beverage
- Hotel Capital 101
- High Fidelity—Sound as a Hospitality Vertical
- Capital Market Trends
- The Lab: No Panels, Just Problems
- The Human Edge: AI, Clarity, and the Boutique Advantage
- Lessons From the Sauna Culture Movement
For more information and to register, please visit the event webpage.