Omni Hotels & Resorts

• 1. Introduction

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  Omni Hotels & Resorts began not in a gleaming lobby, but in a roadside restaurant. In 1958, the Dunfey brothers attached a 32-room motel to Lamie's Tavern in Hampton, New Hampshire. From that modest addition to a family eatery, one of America's largest private hotel companies would eventually take shape. Today, Omni operates 51 properties across the United States and Canada. It employs more than 23,000 people and holds over 20,010 rooms. But the path from Hampton to Dallas passed through Boston, Atlanta, Dublin, and Hong Kong. How did a New Hampshire motel chain become the owner of iconic American resorts like The Homestead in Hot Springs and The Grove Park Inn in Asheville? And what role did an Irish national airline play in shaping a Texas-based hotel empire?

• 2. From Tavern to Chain

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  The Dunfey brothers built their hotel business one New England property at a time. By 1964, they had grown enough to take on 14 Sheraton Hotels franchises, extending their reach well beyond a single motel. In 1968, they made their most significant early move: acquiring the Parker House Hotel in Boston, a property that had been sliding toward insolvency. That acquisition brought a landmark address into a family portfolio that had started with a single motel wing. Three years later, in 1971, the brothers sold Dunfey Hotels to Aetna Life Insurance Company, which was based in Hartford. Aetna kept the Dunfeys on to manage their own properties. Then in 1976, the ownership changed hands again, this time to Aer Lingus, the national airline of Ireland. The pattern was already clear: the Dunfey name and the properties beneath it were moving through owners far larger than the founding family.

• 3. The Omni Acquisition

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  In 1983, Dunfey Hotels purchased a small Atlanta-based chain called Omni International Hotels from Cousins Properties. That chain had been formed in 1973 and consisted of just three hotels, located in Atlanta, Norfolk, and Miami. The purchase prompted a reorganization. Dunfey Hotels split into two operating divisions. The Omni Hotels name would carry the large, upscale modern properties. The smaller motels and remaining Sheraton franchises kept the Dunfey name while the company worked to divest them over the following three years. The Omni brand was not yet dominant; it was simply the label for the higher end of a transitional company. But within five years, the Dunfey name would disappear entirely from the corporate structure, and Omni would be the company's sole public identity. The sale price that changed everything came in 1988, when Aer Lingus sold Omni Hotels to World International Holdings and the Hong Kong-based conglomerate The Wharf (Holdings) Limited for $135 million.

• 4. Texas Ownership and Relocation

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  In February 1996, those Hong Kong owners sold Omni to Robert Rowling of TRT Holdings, a Texas-based private equity investor. Rowling moved the company's headquarters from Hampton, New Hampshire, to Corpus Christi, his own base of operations. Within a year, the headquarters relocated again, this time to Dallas. That double move in rapid succession reflected both the new owner's priorities and Omni's shifting geographic center of gravity. Rowling's Texas connection would prove durable: Omni opened a hotel in Dallas in 2011 and another in Fort Worth in 2009. Corpus Christi itself received an Omni property in 1996. The year of the headquarters move was also the year Omni assumed ownership in Louisiana, with the Omni Riverfront Hotel in New Orleans joining the portfolio that same year.

• 5. Resort Era and Trophy Properties

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  The most expensive single acquisition in Omni's history came in June 2013. The company bought five properties from KSL Capital Partners for a sum that The Wall Street Journal valued at $900 million. The five properties were Barton Creek Resort and Spa in Austin, La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa in Rancho Mirage, The Grove Park Inn in Asheville, and The Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. Each had a reputation that predated Omni's ownership by decades. The deal repositioned Omni as an owner and operator of what it described as iconic American golf resorts. Earlier that same year, in January, Omni had acquired ClubCorp's Montelucia Resort and Spa. In July 2013, the company added the King Edward Hotel in Toronto to its Canadian holdings. December 2015 brought the Omni Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire, a property Omni had already been managing under its brand since 2009.

• 6. CNN Center and Atlanta

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  In 2000, Omni struck a deal with Turner Broadcasting to add a 600-room tower wing alongside its existing hotel at the CNN Center in Atlanta. That new wing opened in 2003. Nearly two decades later, in 2017, Omni bought Time Warner's share of the building outright. The Atlanta footprint extended further in 2018 with the opening of the Omni Hotel at The Battery Atlanta in Cumberland, Georgia. The original Atlanta property, the Omni Atlanta Hotel at Centennial Park, had been part of the portfolio since 1975, making Atlanta one of Omni's longest-standing markets. The $67.1 million purchase of the Amelia Island Plantation in Florida in 2010 followed a similar pattern: Omni buying full ownership of properties it had already been operating in its orbit.

• 7. Ownership Changes and Controversies

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  In March 2018, Peter Strebel was named President of Omni Hotels and Resorts. His tenure overlapped with a significant public controversy. In December 2020, unions criticized Omni for using the Paycheck Protection Program to obtain a low-interest loan for business purposes rather than directing those funds to workers. Had the money gone to employees, the loan would have converted into a grant under the program's rules. Instead, Omni used the loan for other business purposes, drawing union scrutiny during an exceptionally difficult period for the hospitality industry. The following March, in 2021, Omni sold five aging properties, including hotels in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Jacksonville, and Austin. In 2022, Kurt Alexander was appointed the new President of Omni Hotels and Resorts. Omni's one franchised property, a hotel in Cancun, had operated under that arrangement from 1988 until it ended in 2022.