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Boutique hotel interior — Open Ventures portfolio context
CASE STUDY. OPEN VENTURES. BOUTIQUE HOSPITALITY · F&B · WHITE-LABEL

Boutique.Multiplied.

A boutique hospitality group. Hotels, restaurants, F&B tech across DC and Sarasota. This is how iExcel became the operator behind the portfolio — white-labeled, senior, running every property.

Engagement
White-label · Apr 2024 →
Markets
Washington DC · Sarasota FL
Portfolio
8 brands · 4 categories
Program
Meta ads · Social ops · Audits
// The squint test · 2 receipts
13.26%
Lead Conversion Rate
A flagship property's lead campaign cleared the published 10.68% real estate lead-generation average (WordStream).
Hospitality Click-Through Multiple
A hotel traffic campaign ran roughly 7× the published 0.90% travel & hospitality CTR average (WordStream).
Chapter 01 · The Setup

The portfolio behind the portfolio.

Open Ventures runs a boutique collection of hotels, restaurants, and F&B tech investments across two markets — Washington DC and Sarasota. Different concepts, different rooftops, one thesis: elevated, senior-led, operator-run hospitality.

They needed a growth partner who could carry the same standard across the whole portfolio — without stamping an agency logo on it. White-label. Senior. Behind the scenes. The kind of partner who plugs in as an extension of the internal team and disappears into the work.

That's the engagement iExcel was hired to run — starting April 2024, across paid social, social operations, portfolio-level audits, reporting, and the strategic digital marketing infrastructure the group runs on.

Boutique hotel exterior
// April 2024 · The engagement begins
Chapter 02 · The Portfolio

Eight brands. Two markets. One operator.

The Open Ventures roster is compact and curated — the sort of portfolio a boutique agency dreams of and a scaled agency can't do justice. iExcel runs day-to-day paid social and social operations across the full list.

// Hotels
Yours Truly, DC
Washington DC

Yours Truly, DC

// Boutique hotel
Royal Sonesta Dupont Circle
Washington DC · Dupont

Royal Sonesta, Dupont Circle

// Boutique-hospitality flagship
The Edge, Sarasota
Sarasota, FL

The Edge, Sarasota

// Boutique hotel
The Evolution on Golden Gate Point
Golden Gate Point · Sarasota

«The Evolution», Golden Gate Point

// Coastal boutique hotel
// Restaurants
Mercy Me, DC
Washington DC

Mercy Me, DC

// Inside Yours Truly, DC
Certo, DC
Washington DC · Dupont

Certo, DC

// Inside Royal Sonesta Dupont Circle
// F&B Tech
Diamo — F&B tech
Portfolio investment

Diamo

// F&B technology
// F&B
Blossom Beverages
Portfolio brand

Blossom Beverages

// Beverage brand
8
Named Brands · Active Portfolio
Four categories · two markets · one operating rhythm — the same senior team on every account.
Chapter 03 · The Paid Program

Meta, run like a portfolio.

Facebook and Instagram Ads Management across the roster — not as isolated accounts, but as a portfolio. Each property gets its own budget, its own audiences, its own creative rhythm. The read-across happens at the operator level.

That means a Sarasota beach-season learning informs a DC autumn rooms push. A Mercy Me brunch angle that lifts saves gets adapted for Certo's dinner push. When one restaurant cracks a creative pattern, the next property doesn't start from scratch.

The mechanics are boring on purpose: clean tracking, disciplined ad-account hygiene, creative testing calibrated to the property's guest, and reporting that reads clearly enough for a hospitality operator on a Monday.

The read holds up against outside benchmarks, too. A flagship property's lead-generation push converted at 13.26%, clearing the published 10.68% real estate lead-generation average (WordStream) — and a hotel traffic campaign ran roughly the published 0.90% travel & hospitality click-through average (WordStream).

2
Markets · Read Across the Portfolio
DC and Sarasota — coastal and urban seasonality run through the same operator, learnings compound.
13.26%
Lead Conversion Rate · Flagship Property
Clears the published 10.68% real estate lead-generation average (WordStream, 2017 industry benchmark study).
Restaurant ambience
// Meta ads · Portfolio-level creative
Fine dining plating
// The Working Standard

"White-label doesn't mean invisible work. It means the same senior operator on every property — and none of the agency-logo overhead."

Chapter 04 · The Social Ops Layer

The layer under the brand.

Paid social gets the headlines. The unglamorous work is what keeps a hospitality brand looking alive on any given Tuesday — scheduled posts, DMs answered, comments replied to, user stories reshared, saves acknowledged.

iExcel runs that layer across the portfolio. It's the shift work of social — and it's the layer that a booking guest actually sees before they book.

// 01
Post Scheduling

Property-specific calendars, matched to seasonality and inventory.

// 02
DM Response

Bookings, reservations, and guest questions — answered on brand voice.

// 03
Comment Monitoring

Every reply worth a reply — no unread inboxes, no dead threads.

// 04
Story Reshares

Guest UGC amplified inside 24 hours, credit intact, aesthetic intact.

Mixology detail
// Social ops · The layer under the brand
Chapter 05 · Portfolio Visibility

Audits at the portfolio level.

A single property audit is easy. A portfolio audit — read across eight brands, two markets, four categories — is the one Open Ventures needed. Where does spend efficiency lag? Which social channels are actually pulling weight per property? What's the creative pattern that's transferring across concepts?

iExcel runs the recurring audits and rolls them into reporting that a hospitality operator can act on. Not a 40-page dashboard. A read that says: this is what's working, this is what to fix, this is what we'd do next.

The reporting cadence matches how the group actually operates — not the way an agency wants to invoice for it.

4
Categories Reported In One View
Hotels · Restaurants · F&B Tech · F&B — one portfolio-level read, not eight isolated dashboards.
Wine service — hospitality craft
// Portfolio-level audits · Cross-property read
// Verified Lift · Flagship Lead Campaign
+7%

The flagship property's lead-generation campaign lifted its own conversion rate by seven percent after creative and targeting optimization — a verified gain against the program's own baseline, not an outside estimate.

Chapter 06 · The Infrastructure

Strategic under tactical.

Behind the day-to-day is the boring, structural work that most agencies skip: ad account hygiene, pixel and event mapping, brand-asset organization, hand-off documentation, ops rhythm.

The kind of infrastructure that means a new property joining the portfolio doesn't need a six-week onboarding. It gets absorbed into the operating rhythm the same week.

This is what "strategic digital marketing infrastructure" actually looks like — not slide decks, but the plumbing that lets an eight-brand portfolio run without breaking.

"Behind-the-scenes support across paid social, social ops, audits, and reporting. White-labeled. Senior. Across the whole portfolio."
— Open Ventures engagement scope · Apr 2024 →
Bartender crafting a drink
// The plumbing under the portfolio
Chapter 07 · The Read

Why this story matters.

For hospitality groups and agencies running curated portfolios — hotels, restaurants, F&B, tech investments — the Open Ventures relationship is the template.

It isn't the story of one campaign. It's the story of one senior operator running paid social, social operations, audits, and reporting across an entire boutique portfolio — white-labeled, on rhythm, and absorbed into the group's own operating standard.

The CEO of Open Ventures granted permission to name the roster on the record. That's the receipt this case study is built on. Yours Truly, DC. Royal Sonesta Dupont. The Edge. «The Evolution». Mercy Me. Certo. Diamo. Blossom Beverages. Eight brands. One operator. The work continues.

Boutique portfolio.
White-labeled. One operator.

iExcel runs paid social, social operations, portfolio audits, and strategic digital marketing infrastructure — white-labeled for agencies, in-house for hospitality groups, and calibrated to how the portfolio actually operates.

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