Charlestowne Hotels Signs Management Deal with The Thrash Group

CHARLESTON, SC —Charlestowne Hotels has signed a formal agreement with The Thrash Group, a national hospitality development company, to oversee its entire portfolio of hotels.

Under this new agreement, Charlestowne will add ten properties to its portfolio—the management company’s largest single deal in its 40-year history. Five of the newly added properties are part of Origin Hotel, an independent brand of lifestyle hotels.

“Especially considering the current environment and current times, it is nice for our company to have some positive news, growth and new relationships to push us forward,” Gavin Philipp, VP of operations, Charlestowne Hotels, told Hotel Business. “We have been working with The Thrash Group coming up now on six months and certainly feel that we have similar approaches and interests; we are in line professionally and have developed strong professional relationships with them pretty quickly. It is very nice to have some growth, new transitions and new development projects amid the current environment.”

The partnership with The Thrash Group adds more than 1,200 keys to Charlestowne’s portfolio count and expands the management company’s national footprint to 50 hotels in more than 20 states, including the group’s first properties in Kentucky, Colorado and Texas. The company will also help Thrash develop experience-driven independent lifestyle properties in markets such as Morgantown, WV, and Tupelo, MS. The Thrash Group has also tapped Charlestowne Hotels to oversee the continued development and expansion of the Origin Hotel brand, which is projected to grow up to 10 hotels in the next four years under Charlestowne’s management.

“Origin Hotels is a boutique lifestyle brand that The Thrash Group created, so certainly our experience with managing primarily independent, boutique, lifestyle properties made it a good fit for us,” said Philipp. “We feel pretty strongly that our ability in that space can enhance the Origin brand itself, so we are putting a lot of time and energy on the marketing and operations side to enhance the Origin brand—how we cross-promote, cross-sell and utilize operational best practices. Even though it is a ‘brand,’ it is very much a boutique, lifestyle, independent brand, and there is opportunity for unique creation at each individual asset. There are also other hotels that we are working with The Thrash Group on that are pure independent hotels.”

The following set of Thrash properties will be immediately added to Charlestowne’s portfolio: Origin Red Rocks (CO), Origin Lexington (KY), Origin Raleigh (NC), Origin Westminster (CO), Origin Austin (TX) and Hotel Morgan (WV). The second phase of property additions include DoubleTree by Hilton Ft. Smith (AK), The Admiral Hotel (AL), and a property in Tupelo, MS.

“Each of our hotels, and the teams that support them, have their own personality, culture and guest experience. Charlestowne’s work will act as a microphone for these brand attributes,” said Walker Thrash, partner of The Thrash Group. “The Charlestowne Hotels team doesn’t manage in a box; they hone in on the unique identity of each property to develop operations, marketing and revenue strategies built to mirror each hotel’s individual characteristics, while keeping a keen eye on guest experience.”