Life House

Life House is a vertically integrated hotel company that combines a boutique hotel brand, third-party hotel management and proprietary operating software aimed at independent hotel owners. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in New York, it launched publicly in October 2018 with its first property in Miami's Little Havana, positioning itself as a technology-first hotel company that develops, designs, brands and operates properties rather than performing only one of those functions. Its stated objective is to make hotels simpler and more profitable to own and run, with software covering revenue management and dynamic pricing, financial reporting and accounting, general operations, and branding and design.

By December 2021 the company managed close to 50 hotels in North America, ranging from 14-room properties to 375-room assets and including motels, urban hotels and luxury properties. About 85% of the portfolio at that point was not Life House-branded but used its software under white-label agreements, a shift from roughly 50% branded at the time of its Series B in January 2020. Concurrent with its Series C the company began selling software directly to hoteliers it does not manage, describing itself as evolving into a SaaS business with about 70 employees. A later aggregator profile describes a portfolio of more than 60 hotels and over 2,500 rooms across more than 18 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico, built on nine in-house systems integrated with third-party tools, and includes operation of Kayak-branded hotels.

The life-house.com domain currently serves the website of Lark Hospitality (Lark Hotels), a hotel management and development company that lists Life House among its brands alongside Lark, Bluebird by Lark, Blind Tiger, AWOL and Lark Independent. Lark's brand pages describe Life House as a storytelling-led hotel concept and list Life House Nantucket (17 keys) as a property. Note that sources describing Lark Hotels' own operations and metrics relate to the Lark platform rather than to Life House's standalone startup history.

Founding story

Rami Zeidan founded Life House after roughly a decade across hotel real estate investing, development, branding, operations and corporate finance, including work at Starwood on the launch of a management company for 1 Hotels and Baccarat and time at Sydell Group. He co-founded the company with Yury Yakubchyk, a software engineer who served as CTO, seeking to pair narrative-driven hotel development with a technology-first operating model. The brand launched publicly in October 2018 with its first hotel in Miami's Little Havana.

Business model

Life House operates an asset-light model: it does not own the underlying real estate but partners with hotel owners and real estate partners, providing branding, design, development support and day-to-day management, and licensing its proprietary operating and revenue management software. Since 2021 it also sells software components to third-party hotels it does not manage, including white-label arrangements. Management has said it is interested in being compensated in part by taking a percentage of direct bookings generated through its revenue platform.

Revenue comes from hotel management and operating agreements with owners, brand/franchise-style arrangements for its hotel brands, and software licensing to third-party hotels, with an expressed interest in fees tied to a percentage of direct bookings driven by its revenue platform.

Traction

Reported growth of about 600% from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to late 2021, driven by owners seeking cost reduction. Managed close to 50 hotels in North America as of December 2021 and, per a later aggregator profile, more than 60 hotels and 2,500-plus rooms. The company claims its software has increased hotel profitability by over 200% and net revenues by over 45%. It had spent a little over $20 million in its first four years before raising $60 million more.

Latest developments

Life House appears as a brand within Lark Hospitality's portfolio, with Life House Nantucket (17 keys, Nantucket, MA) listed as a property and a 'Become a Life House Hotel' owner pitch on the Lark site. A secondary profile describes continued operation of 60-plus hotels, nine proprietary systems and expansion of the Kayak partnership into larger urban hotels of 75-200 rooms.