Adele Munroe left a career in commercial real estate to open her first boutique inn inside a vacant historic building on a small-town Main Street, a project that has since grown into Prairie Hearth Hospitality Group, a small chain of renovated inns operating in historic downtown buildings across several of Oklahoma's smaller cities.
Munroe has said each property in the growing portfolio starts the same way: identifying a vacant or underused historic building in a downtown that has begun attracting new small businesses, then working with local preservation groups and city officials to renovate the structure in a way that respects its original architecture while adding modern hospitality amenities travelers now expect.
Betting on Regional and Small-Town Travel
Munroe's business model depends on a trend she has watched build steadily over the past several years: travelers increasingly interested in weekend trips to small Oklahoma towns with walkable downtowns, local restaurants, and historic character, rather than only booking chain hotels near highway interchanges. She has described her properties as designed for guests who want a distinctive, locally rooted experience rather than a standardized hotel room that could be located anywhere.
Each Prairie Hearth property is designed to reflect the specific history of its building and town, with Munroe working closely with local historical societies to source period-appropriate design details and, where possible, incorporate stories about the building's original use into the guest experience. She has said this attention to local specificity, rather than a chain-style consistency across properties, is central to the brand's identity.
Balancing Preservation With Profitability
Renovating historic buildings for modern hospitality use often involves navigating outdated electrical and plumbing systems, along with historic preservation guidelines that can limit certain structural changes, and Munroe has said each new property has come with its own unexpected costs and delays tied to the building's age and condition. She has described profitability as slower to achieve than a standard new-construction hotel, but has said the distinctiveness of each property has allowed Prairie Hearth to charge rates that make the extra renovation investment worthwhile over time.
Looking ahead, Munroe has said she continues to evaluate potential properties in other small Oklahoma downtowns with historic buildings and a growing local business base, though she has emphasized that each new location requires the same careful, building-specific approach rather than a formula that can simply be replicated at scale.
