K9 Resorts is a luxury pet hotel franchise with more than 40 locations nationwide.
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K9 Resorts allows its dog clients to do everything they love: eat, sleep and play.
That’s what inspired Phil Nisbet and Alan Leibman to sign a franchise agreement with the brand and later invest $10 million in the luxury dog boarding franchise. “It’s like nothing else—visually and as a business owner,” Nisbet said. “There’s no luxury brand in the market like K9 Resorts.”
The pair, co-CEOs of Luxury Pet Hotel Investments, invested in the brand in March 2024. They initially were developing 11 locations in Los Angeles and with this deal bought another 30 territories.
The cage-free environment gives dogs the freedom to run around and “get their steps in,” Leibman said.
Leibman said the brand has evolved, but that’s not entirely because of the extra millions. “We’ve had robust, good business discussions,” he said. “Everyone is pretty aligned.” The collaboration allows LPHI and K9 Resorts to share resources and ideas.
Phil Nisbet is a K9 Resorts franchisee and co-CEO of Luxury Pet Hotel Investments.
Jason Parker is a co-founder of K9 Resorts.
Steve Parker is a co-founder of K9 Resorts.
Leibman has decades of experience in the (human) hotel space, with former stints at the Ritz-Carlton company in Australia and at Kerzner International, which owns luxury hotel brands such as Atlantis. Nisbet is a franchisee of Jersey Mike’s and Wingstop, on top of K9 Resorts.
K9 Resorts’ origin story is wholesome: brothers Steve and Jason Parker started a dog walking business as kids to convince their parents they could handle the responsibility of adopting their own dog. “We were never able to convince them we had enough responsibility,” Steve Parker said.
It’s come a long way since then. The Parkers opened the first K9 Resorts hotel in 2005 in New Jersey, started franchising in 2010 and today the brand has more than 40 resorts open nationwide. Facilities range from 5,000 to 15,000 square feet and on average can host 100 dogs overnight. Franchisees have built new facilities from the ground up on vacant lots and converted existing large spaces (think former Walgreens or CVS stores).
Leibman and Nisbet “were able to bring a franchise owner perspective to our board of directors, which I believe has been really beneficial,” Jason Parker said. With that knowledge, K9 Resorts lowered costs to build a K9 Resorts facility. “The quality at each location is not affected, but each franchise owner is able to make a little bit of a smaller investment overall and, therefore, their return on investment is greater.”
K9 Resorts has raised capital a few times in the last decade, and each time Jason Parker comes away with this lesson: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
LPHI’s capital investment is the largest to date for K9 Resorts. “They bought more units and invested in the parent company. They did that at the same time,” Jason Parker said. “That goes to show anyone out there that’s interested in the franchise model that, if you do things the right way, if the franchise owners make money and the franchise owners are happy, there’s no limit as to how you can grow with your family of franchise owners.”