SAN FRANCISCO— Veteran hotelier Tom LaTour, CEO/Chairman of Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, LLC, will retire effective June 30 and pass the leadership baton for the pioneering lifestyle brand to company president Michael Depatie.
“You always contemplate what your life looks like and mine has come in many stages and as we look at the activity we’ve undertaken over the last 25 years”— the company marked a quarter-century April 1— “it seems it ought to be time for the next generation to take over and see how they can grow the company for the future,” said LaTour.
Depatie will be only the third executive to helm the chain of eclectic properties, which includes its core Kimpton brand and sub-brands Monaco and Palomar. Some 23 years ago, LaTour hooked up with company founder Bill Kimpton and the two carved a deep niche within hospitality that largely created the boutique hotel segment and the seminal platform for contemporary lifestyle hotel models. They used unique marketing approaches like a companion goldfish in the guest-room for homesick travelers and a development philosophy that embraced quirky buildings and cutting-edge design. The pair put the two-hotel firm, then represented by the Bedford Hotel and the Hotel Vintage Court with its popular Masa restaurant, on an aggressive growth track. It’s a strategy LaTour expanded when Kimpton died in 2001 shortly after being diagnosed with leukemia, and it continues. The company currently has a 38-property portfolio, 15 of which are corporate owned and 23 are managed. There are 10 under development and 10 in the pipeline. At press time, the company had just acquired the 189-room Nine Zero hotel in Boston, reportedly for $71 million.
LaTour will keep his hands in hospitality as a consultant to the Kimpton company and will sit on the board of directors. “I won’t be totally absent but it’s time for the younger people to grow it as I did in the beginning,” said LaTour.
LaTour stressed the company he is turning over to Depatie’s stewardship still has significant room to grow and “has never been in better shape as far as number of assets, quality of people, profitability, opportunity in the boutique sector; everything is aligning and I think it’s the best time for me to retire.”
Among the top three milestones marked by LaTour is his handshake with Kimpton in 1983 and recalling an easy business model that said if the properties they had worked they would continue to expand. Another is the expansion of the San Francisco-based company to the East, with properties in New York and Washington, D.C, and now Boston. Third, he said, has been the ability to attract “hugely professional people and professional capital. i.e., institutional capital to fund and back this concept and to grow it rapidly.”
Toward that, in 2005 Kimpton Hospitality Partners LP was created, a $157.2 million fund designed to acquire/develop more than $450 million in hotel assets over a two-year period.
Depatie indicated with the current executive team reporting to him in his new role, “we can grow this company to a very substantial size.”
He estimated 62% of the fund has been spent, leaving approximately $47 million (leveraged at 35%). “That’s still a fair amount of spending power,” said Depatie. He noted Kimpton also was open to acquisitions via joint ventures, either through the fund or the company.
In terms of growth and brand awareness, once he becomes CEO Depatie said he will remain concentrated on growing the core Kimpton brand and continue to position the portfolio as “a brand of one.” He acknowledged the Monaco and Palomar concepts “seem to resonate so strongly with our customers and developers that we just find ourselves doing more and more of those sub-brands under Kimpton.” He said the company will continue to add those where they make sense. “If neither one of them seem to fit the project, we would create another name, but they’d all still be in the Kimpton family, all with a tagline ‘A Kimpton Hotel.’”
He expected projects such as the Hotel Palomar Dallas, a mixed-use development with hotel, residences and a small condo-hotel component to see greater development as well. “The reason we seem to be getting more and more projects that have a residential component is because when a developer thinks about what hotel brand would help them sell the condominiums, which adds some cachet and allows them to get a premium on the pricing of the condos, a boutique hotel, and particularly a Kimpton boutique hotel, seems to be one of those that fits the bill,” said Depatie. He added, however, “We don’t want to be involved in any projects where we don’t like the hotel as a hotel…We’re looking at a couple of projects, but we’re looking at them very carefully.”
“You always contemplate what your life looks like and mine has come in many stages and as we look at the activity we’ve undertaken over the last 25 years”— the company marked a quarter-century April 1— “it seems it ought to be time for the next generation to take over and see how they can grow the company for the future,” said LaTour.
Depatie will be only the third executive to helm the chain of eclectic properties, which includes its core Kimpton brand and sub-brands Monaco and Palomar. Some 23 years ago, LaTour hooked up with company founder Bill Kimpton and the two carved a deep niche within hospitality that largely created the boutique hotel segment and the seminal platform for contemporary lifestyle hotel models. They used unique marketing approaches like a companion goldfish in the guest-room for homesick travelers and a development philosophy that embraced quirky buildings and cutting-edge design. The pair put the two-hotel firm, then represented by the Bedford Hotel and the Hotel Vintage Court with its popular Masa restaurant, on an aggressive growth track. It’s a strategy LaTour expanded when Kimpton died in 2001 shortly after being diagnosed with leukemia, and it continues. The company currently has a 38-property portfolio, 15 of which are corporate owned and 23 are managed. There are 10 under development and 10 in the pipeline. At press time, the company had just acquired the 189-room Nine Zero hotel in Boston, reportedly for $71 million.
LaTour will keep his hands in hospitality as a consultant to the Kimpton company and will sit on the board of directors. “I won’t be totally absent but it’s time for the younger people to grow it as I did in the beginning,” said LaTour.
LaTour stressed the company he is turning over to Depatie’s stewardship still has significant room to grow and “has never been in better shape as far as number of assets, quality of people, profitability, opportunity in the boutique sector; everything is aligning and I think it’s the best time for me to retire.”
Among the top three milestones marked by LaTour is his handshake with Kimpton in 1983 and recalling an easy business model that said if the properties they had worked they would continue to expand. Another is the expansion of the San Francisco-based company to the East, with properties in New York and Washington, D.C, and now Boston. Third, he said, has been the ability to attract “hugely professional people and professional capital. i.e., institutional capital to fund and back this concept and to grow it rapidly.”
Toward that, in 2005 Kimpton Hospitality Partners LP was created, a $157.2 million fund designed to acquire/develop more than $450 million in hotel assets over a two-year period.
Depatie indicated with the current executive team reporting to him in his new role, “we can grow this company to a very substantial size.”
He estimated 62% of the fund has been spent, leaving approximately $47 million (leveraged at 35%). “That’s still a fair amount of spending power,” said Depatie. He noted Kimpton also was open to acquisitions via joint ventures, either through the fund or the company.
In terms of growth and brand awareness, once he becomes CEO Depatie said he will remain concentrated on growing the core Kimpton brand and continue to position the portfolio as “a brand of one.” He acknowledged the Monaco and Palomar concepts “seem to resonate so strongly with our customers and developers that we just find ourselves doing more and more of those sub-brands under Kimpton.” He said the company will continue to add those where they make sense. “If neither one of them seem to fit the project, we would create another name, but they’d all still be in the Kimpton family, all with a tagline ‘A Kimpton Hotel.’”
He expected projects such as the Hotel Palomar Dallas, a mixed-use development with hotel, residences and a small condo-hotel component to see greater development as well. “The reason we seem to be getting more and more projects that have a residential component is because when a developer thinks about what hotel brand would help them sell the condominiums, which adds some cachet and allows them to get a premium on the pricing of the condos, a boutique hotel, and particularly a Kimpton boutique hotel, seems to be one of those that fits the bill,” said Depatie. He added, however, “We don’t want to be involved in any projects where we don’t like the hotel as a hotel…We’re looking at a couple of projects, but we’re looking at them very carefully.”
Brand Expansion
He also said Kimpton also would consider a group of properties if the owner wanted to sell the management rights and they fit the portfolio.
“We’re looking for all ways to grow the Kimpton brand. The thing we have to be careful of and make sure is that we don’t harm the culture we’ve created…the service culture that we have is really critical to continue to make a hotel a Kimpton,” stressed Depatie.
Said LaTour: “People thought we were ‘out there’ when we started and people still think we’re ‘out there.’ We had a mission to be inclusive but different. One of the things that I will keep telling the people here is to drive the competition crazy. Come up with ideas, be innovative. And that’s what we’ll still do…Drive the competition crazy.”