Parable Hospitality, which manages 30 hotels in California and Hawaii, likes to promote from within, counting 46 internal promotions last year.
“We spend a lot of time on how can we invest in our team, how can we invest in people so that they can get their next promotion?” President Scott Roby told the Business Journal.
“The true north that I keep coming back to is that we want to help each individual reach their full potential.”
Parable ranks No. 5 on the Business Journal’s annual list of Best Places to Work in the large company category. Parable counts 125 employees in Orange County and has 1,292 companywide (see page 24).
“If we take care of our team members, they’re going to take care of the guests, and the guests are going to take care of the revenue, and the profit will come, which is going to make happy owners,” Roby said.
The Spinoff
Parable is a newly formed company that’s a spinoff of Pacifica Hotels, whose owners, brothers Matt, Adam and Chris Marquis, are refocusing on investing and developing more properties rather than the management side.
Roby joined the Aliso Viejo-based Pacifica in late 2024 to design a new, “owner-centric” management group that would become Parable.
Roby did something similar when he co-founded Evolution Hospitality in 2011 for Newport Beach’s Tarsadia Hotels. He worked at Evolution for 13 years, including after it was acquired by Aimbridge Hospitality in 2015.
When Roby left Evolution to start consulting in early 2024, he was contacted by Chris Marquis to discuss the idea of Parable. Roby then spent the next several months as a consultant, getting to know the family and company until officially joining as president that December.
“We wanted to create this owner-centric management partner that, frankly, in our minds, doesn’t really exist in the industry anymore, because there’s been so much consolidation in our business,” Roby said. “There’s so much private equity money now in management companies, and the landscape has changed so drastically.”
Roby launched Parable in January as the management partner for all former Pacifica properties, including the resorts owned by the Marquis’ Invest West Financial Management and other independent hotels, such as Woods Cove Inn and Bay Shores Peninsula owned by Spencer Samuelian and Blake Marriott.
Parable, which is currently still in Pacifica Hotels office in Aliso Viejo, is looking to move into new offices later this year.
Fixing ‘Misalignment’ in Hospitality
The Marquis’ hotels currently make up two-thirds of Parable’s portfolio.
“The collection of hotels from San Diego all the way to San Francisco, with stops in basically every part of California that you would want to have a hotel in, was a great portfolio,” Roby said.
During his time at Evolution, Roby said the firm would often cross paths with Pacifica as competitors in the coastal California markets. Now under Parable, the Invest West-owned Pacifica hotels will be considered as a brand collection.
Roby noted that Parable launched during a time of “misalignment” in hospitality, as revenue growth has not kept pace with hotel costs. He said that hotels are experiencing a period of low revenue per available room (RevPAR), a key industry metric.
Thus, Parable is introducing a new fee structure. Instead of earning 3% of revenues, Parable has proposed 1% of revenue and 5% of gross operating profit to better manage expenses and labor while driving “as much money to the bottom line as possible.”
The management firm will also look to enter new markets, after minimal activity from Pacifica in the last few years. Roby said Parable could also add more full-service hotels.
“We see ourselves growing into larger, more complicated hotels, while still absolutely being able to execute on these small boutique hotels,” Roby said.
With most of its current properties in California, Roby sees Parable expanding to Oregon and Washington state. He intends to stay in the Western U.S., no further east than Utah, to remain “as a super regional operation.”
Roby added that he would like the firm to “stretch geographically” in the next 12 to 18 months to prove that what he’s built at Parable works. It will soon manage a new Marriott property, Hotel Anna of the Tribute portfolio, that is currently in the works in Santa Barbara, opening in 2027.
“I think that our wheelhouse will be in the 200 to 450-key range, but could we do something bigger? Absolutely,” Roby said. “We’re prepared to drive performance at any kind of hotel.”
Best Places to Work
Roby noted that when he joined over a year ago, employees gave the firm’s benefits low marks, prompting him to improve their experiences, including bringing special speakers to monthly luncheons or allowing people to work in other departments they’re interested in for a day.
Other in-office perks and amenities include a tea and coffee bar, arcade games, ping pong table, shuffle board and a refrigerator stocked with non-alcoholic beverages. Employees also have access to LinkedIn’s learning library and the firm’s own set of resources dubbed “Parable Hospitality University.”
Roby said that being recognized as one of Orange County’s Best Places to Work is encouraging, especially considering the season of change Parable just went through.
“It’s an affirmation of the work that we’re all collectively doing together,” he said.
