Going Indie: How Jennifer Barnwell Built a Home for Boutique Hotels

Jennifer Barnwell, President
Curator Hotels & Resorts

What does it take to bet on the underdogs of the hotel world?

Jennifer Barnwell has spent more than 25 years building expertise across real estate investment, asset management, and hospitality — and she channeled all of it into Curator Hotel & Resort Collection, a membership platform she co-launched in November 2020 to give independent and boutique hotels the buying power and marketing reach of a big brand, without making them give up what makes them special.

In this conversation, Jen talks to us about the real business mechanics behind Curator, why the ‘indie rebel’ identity matters, and how she navigated the process of building something new during one of the most uncertain periods in travel history. She also gets refreshingly honest about her own career path: a Cornell student who thought she’d end up at a bank, guided into the hotel school by her older sister, and still crediting that pivot decades later.

In this episode:

✦  What Curator Hotel & Reort Collection is and who it’s for
✦  How vendor agreements and collective scale help small hotels compete
✦  The relationship between independent hotels, Airbnb, and the OTA landscape
✦  What the K-shaped economy means for boutique and luxury properties
✦  The story behind launching Curator during COVID and why it still made sense
✦  What surprised her most about the hotel industry (hint: it’s smaller than you think)
✦ Three things she’d tell her younger self

MBTI vibe: ENTJ / ENTP / ESTJ / ENFJ
Perception & social intelligence • Action orientation • Values-driven motivation • Strategic vision • Comfort with ambiguity and building • Relationship steward

Listen to the full episode

Need to Know Facts*

About Jennifer Barnwell
As President of Curator Hotel & Resort Collection, Jennifer Barnwell teamed up with multiple visionaries to launch this one-of-a-kind platform in November 2020. Curator Hotel & Resort Collection provides independent hotels and resorts with the power to compete together through program benefits while allowing its members the freedom to retain what makes their properties unique. Previous to Curator, Barnwell was Senior Vice President of Asset Management of Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, a leading lodging real estate investment trust which was formed and went public in 2009.  She oversaw hotels on the west coast in San Francisco and Los Angeles and had a team of three Asset Managers reporting to her. Prior to joining Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, Barnwell was Senior Vice President of Peninsula Real Estate LLC, a private real estate investment fund based in New York.  While at Peninsula Real Estate LLC Ms. Barnwell was involved in all aspects of the fund including formation, acquisitions, and asset management.  Previously, Barnwell was Vice President of Tishman Hotel & Realty LP where she was involved in Tishman Hotel & Realty’s many activities including acquisitions, management, asset management, development, and brokerage.  Jennifer holds a B.S. from The School of Hotel Administration of Cornell University, graduating with Distinction.  Jennifer is currently on the Board of Advisors for the Independent Lodging Congress, is a member of the Advisory Committee for ForWard (Women Advancing Hospitality) and is a member of AHLA’s Independent & Boutiques Committee.