Who Owns Ace Hotel?

Alex Calderwood, Wade Weigel, and Doug Herrick opened the first Ace Hotel in a former maritime workers' lodging house in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood in 1999. The founders, rooted in the city's music and design scene, furnished it with thrifted and industrial pieces, creating the template for what became known as the lobby-as-living-room boutique hotel.

The brand expanded to Portland and Palm Springs, then reached New York in 2009, where the Ace Hotel New York's lobby became a defining gathering space for the city's creative class. London followed in 2013, then Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Chicago, and other cities, each tuned to its local creative community through Atelier Ace, the in-house design studio.

Calderwood's death in November 2013 shifted the company into investor-backed ownership, and the brand consolidated through the late 2010s, closing weaker properties while opening Kyoto in 2020, Brooklyn and Toronto in 2021, and Sydney in 2022. Ace returned to Europe with the Athens Ace Hotel and Swim Club in 2024.

In September 2025, Japan's Seibu Prince Hotels Worldwide acquired Ace Group International for approximately $90 million, aiming to use Ace's design and cultural programming expertise to expand internationally. Development continues with Ace Hotel Fukuoka slated for 2027.