BLUFFTON, South Carolina—Landingplace Hotels announced the launch of Borderless Hotel Alliance, an independent hotel affiliation platform designed to give hotel owners access to technology, distribution, loyalty, procurement, and commercial resources while allowing owners to retain their hotels’ names, identities, and operational independence.
Ambassadors Inn & Suites, a 102-room independent hotel in Virginia Beach owned by Harshad Barot and members of his family, has signed an agreement to become the first member of Borderless Hotel Alliance and the first hotel in the Landingplace Hotels system.
The hotel is beginning the onboarding process, with full integration into the Landingplace system and its official debut as a Borderless Hotel Alliance property targeted for December 2026. Located adjacent to the Virginia Beach Convention Center and five blocks from the Virginia Beach Oceanfront, Ambassadors Inn & Suites has been operated by the Barot family for more than two decades.
Statement From Leadership
“For us, this is much bigger than signing the first hotel in our system,” said Jeremy Bratcher, chief executive officer and co-founder of Landingplace Hotels. “It’s proof that the model works with a real, experienced independent owner who had other options and chose this deliberately. Harshad and Swati had choices. We spent considerable time understanding what they wanted for the hotel, what they wanted to preserve and where they saw opportunities to strengthen the business. The relationship developed through trust, transparency and alignment around their goals, and that’s exactly the kind of owner relationship we envisioned when we created Landingplace.”
Platform Details
Unlike a traditional hotel franchise or soft brand, Borderless does not replace a hotel’s existing identity with another consumer-facing hotel brand. Participating properties retain their names, individual identities, and independent ownership while gaining access to a broader hospitality platform that can include reservations and distribution technology, revenue-management resources, procurement relationships, guest loyalty benefits, and digital marketing support.
“Independent shouldn’t have to mean isolated,” said Glenn Miller, executive vice president of commercial strategy for Landingplace Hotels. “Experienced independent owners often know their hotels, guests and markets better than anyone. The challenge is that an individual hotel can’t always access or efficiently assemble the same depth of revenue management, distribution, technology, and commercial resources available to branded hotels. Borderless is designed to bring those capabilities together in a way that helps independent hotels compete more effectively without asking owners to give up what made them independent in the first place.”
Infrastructure and Independence
As part of onboarding, Ambassadors Inn & Suites will undertake a technology and commercial modernization designed to improve operating efficiency, enhance the guest experience, and expand the hotel’s visibility to prospective guests throughout the booking journey. The model does not impose a traditional brand identity or prescriptive brand standards designed to make participating hotels look and operate alike. Instead, it is designed to strengthen the infrastructure behind an existing independent hotel while preserving the identity ownership has already built.
“We’ve operated Ambassadors Inn & Suites ourselves for more than 30 years, and the hotel business has changed tremendously during that time,” said Harshad Barot, owner of Ambassadors Inn & Suites. “Knowing your guests and your market is still important, but today you also must compete through technology, distribution, revenue management, and all the different ways travelers find and book hotels. We knew Ambassadors needed to evolve in those areas, and Borderless gives us an opportunity to do that while building on what has worked for us for more than three decades.”
“The relationship was very important to us,” said Swati Barot, owner of Ambassadors Inn & Suites. “The Landingplace team took the time to listen to what we wanted and understand the hotel before recommending solutions. We felt we were working with people who respected what we’ve built and wanted to help us make it stronger.”