Today is the day

The best thing about having my own website is that I can write anything I want and give it its place in the digital universe alongside the *complete bs* that is out there on some topics.

In 2004 I purchased an inn in Kennebunkport Maine together with my then-husband. We had previously managed a similarly-sized inn on Nantucket for one year. 

Lark Hotels was formed in 2012 as a marketing and advertising strategy for three New-England inns: the Captain Fairfield Inn (Kennebunkport; 9 rooms), the Veranda House (Nantucket; 18 rooms), and the Attwater (Newport; 12 rooms). All three of these inns were owned wholly or in part by myself and Robert Blood.

The first ideation of Lark Hotels was created by Robert Blood, Leigh Blood, Dawn Hagin, Adam Policky, and Rachel Reider. Robert and Leigh were hotel operators, Dawn and Adam were branding, marketing, and website design, and Rachel was interior design.

In 2013, Lark Hotels began operating as a hotel management company, managing the properties owned by Robert and Leigh Blood as well as other properties with outside owners. Lark Hotels formed as an LLC owned by Robert (co-owned with Leigh through marriage), Dawn (co-owned with Adam through marriage) and Rachel.

While we deliberated the job titles we wanted to use, how the company really functioned was this:

• Robert - CEO, CFO, COO, and a co- with everyone else’s position wherever he wanted to put in his input. No one could run their “department” independently of him. Lark was and is his baby. Also the contact person for other owners, company development and expansion.
• Leigh - Operations and finance director/manager, and chief of organization, communication and effective functioning of the company. Glitch fixer and problem solver. Also regional manager, bookkeeper, HR manager before there was a separate HR manager, co-creator of the Lark manager training program, co-creator of the Lark retreat, creator of Lark and property operations manuals, contact with ownership CFOs. 
• Rachel - Chief of interior design including concept creation for each property and concept of “Lark” being expressed throughout that design, as well as development of each design, purchasing, and installation at each property.
• Dawn - Chief of creation - of the name “Lark Hotels”, and, together with Adam, the bird image, the logo, the brand concept, as well as how the brand was proliferated throughout the entire expression of what Lark was. Also brand partnership manager.
• Adam - photographer, website design and construction, and all things technical. 

Lark Hotels was, and remains today, a very design-driven brand. In other words, the image of the brand and the hotels is very important. The vision of the company as put forth by Dawn and Rob, was that nearly all aspects of the hotels were to be controlled by Lark. While this may be common in the hospitality world, the owners of the small, personal hotels (which would really much more appropriately be called “inns”, as none exceeded the size of 20 rooms) wanted to have a say in things like furniture choices and beverage selections (for properties with liquor licenses). Lark design is quite unique, not more uniform and standard as in, say, a Marriott or a Hilton, and therefore, there was a lot of fodder for strong opinions and differences of those opinions between ownership and Lark, at the properties which were not owned by Robert and Leigh. Those conflicts continue to be a problem for Lark today, as Lark rarely feels that owners have worthwhile ideas and instead consider themselves “experts” in the field (see any number of press articles on this). However, most owners do not consider their inn ownership to be simply a financial investment, but rather an investment in something with meaning for them - whether it be a project that brings joy, a place in their local business community, or a spot to welcome their family and friends as well as other guests. They want to have a say in the aesthetic and the service being offered. Lark Hotels has always prided themselves on being a boutique, customized management company - being “about people” and being able to be nimble enough to offer different solutions for different properties. I do not see how this has been successfully achieved, and in my opinion it remains a nice idea. How frustrating for everyone that Lark Hotels cannot find more ways to work together with ownership to serve everyone’s goals in a more balanced way.

In 2016, Lark Hotels started to take on a drastically darker tone within the company. In 2015, eight new hotels were added, which put a tremendous strain on the central team. People were stretched thin, overworked, and underappreciated. There was a lot of turnover, and little understanding that this might be the time to be a little more generous with salaries to keep people on for a longer tenure.

In mid 2015, Leigh expressed strong feelings to Rob that the company was taking on too much, and this was not sustainable for her. Rob said that they only had to keep doing it a few more years. But this had been said before, and because of that and other lies from the past, Leigh told Rob that she did not trust him anymore. By 2016, Leigh decided to leave Lark Hotels. She spent the remainder of 2016 working truly unbearable hours to clean up a very messy state of affairs that had accumulated on the bookkeeping side of operations. She had already hired a financial consultant, and with his help, migrated all of the books to a new accounting system that was hospitality-specific, and hired and trained a controller and a staff of bookkeepers and accountants to support the dramatic increase in bookkeeping for the larger number of Lark-managed properties. By the fall of 2016, Leigh announced that she would be leaving Lark Hotels, and that she would take time to transition oversight of the financial department to the new controller. She spent the better part of 2017 doing that, and in the fall of 2017 she quietly handed over the reins fully to the Controller.

In 2017, amidst a host of issues amongst the Lark Hotels ownership team, including Rob’s making unilateral decisions where the others felt they should have had the opportunity to weigh in on some of these decisions, Lark hired a Boston firm to do a business appraisal of Lark. This was completed over the summer of 2017, and once a value was reached, Rob bought out Rachel, Dawn and Leigh (the buyout with Leigh happened concurrently with their divorce, which was in part caused by the lack of respect and consideration for her not only to his business partners, but also as his wife.)

As of the end of 2017, Leigh, Dawn, and Adam were no longer owners, investors, employees, or participants in Lark Hotels. Leigh retained her individual ownership interest in the hotels that she had co-owned with Rob. From that point on, the actions of Lark Hotels the management company are not in any way a reflection of the values she wanted the company to have and the principles she wanted the company to be associated with, namely with regards to effective communication throughout the organization and respect for everyone in the company.