Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group To Expand Eastward, Seeks New York, Boston Sites

SAN FRANCISCO? Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group is coming to the East Coast, marking a new strategy for the boutique hotel operator which has the bulk of its roots in the San Francisco market. Tom LaTour, president of Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, said that he has a team of three people in New York and Boston on a constant basis, ?looking at anything that is empty,? continuing Kimpton?s strategy of seeking out older, undervalued assets that could serve as hotels. Meanwhile, Kimpton has already inked a deal in Washington, D.C. to build a 190-room upscale boutique hotel there. LaTour said New York and Boston are tough markets to crack, especially because of where we are in the economic cycle. ?After constant growth [in the economic cycle]the price of real estate and the demand for real estate are at an all-time high. Finding value in the marketplace is difficult,? he said. ?It?s difficult to find assets on the East Coast.? In New York, Kimpton is looking at the SoHo and West Village markets.Boston, he said, is more difficult to find development projects because it is smaller in size. LaTour said that while it has been Kimpton?s strategy all along to expand eastward, the acceleration of that strategy has been facilitated thanks to the expansion of the boutique hotel category driven by Starwood?s new W brand. ?We could never have put that much money into promoting the category,? said LaTour. ?We are enjoying the halo effect that Starwood is putting against the new brand,? he said. Because of the new popularity of the boutique niche, Kimpton?whose properties typically number under the 200 mark? is now getting calls from people who want to work with the San Francisco-based company. LaTour dubbed Kimpton?s style as being ?au courant, that appeals to frequent travelers? who can compare the product to other hotels. Guests at a Kimpton hotel tend to feel recognized and known, he said, because of the small size of the properties. The properties also tend to be unique, since Kimpton, which currently has 23 hotels open in San Francisco; Seattle and Tacoma, WA.; Portland, OR, Denver, Chicago and Salt Lake City, has made a niche out of carving hotels out of existing, non-traditional structures. The Hotel Palomar, which opened in San Francisco in September, was an old jewelry exchange building, while the Alexis Hotel in Seattle was previously a telephone switching building. The Burnham Hotel, which opened in September in Chicago, was an old millinery building. LaTour said any building is a candidate for a Kimpton hotel, as long as it is ?well located and empty.? Meanwhile, Kimpton also said it will expand for the first time outside of the United States, as well, with a property set to open in Vancouver in April. That hotel, which is being developed in a twin-towered building which is a 1969 landmark on downtown?s Robson Street, will be a 233-suite property. Kimpton is also well known for its eclectic restaurants which it always pairs up with the hotels it opens. The restaurants vary in relation to the neighborhood the hotel is in. For example, the restaurant at the Serrano Hotel, which opened in San Francisco last June, ?is hip in style because it is slightly ?off-location,?? said LaTour, noting that the restaurant seeks the ?PIB,? or, People In Black market. The Hotel Palomar, meanwhile, has an elegant French restaurant which commands $125 a person. That site, said LaTour, ?took off like a rocket.? Because of the emphasis Kimpton puts on its restaurants, the facilities are managed separately from the hotels they are in, said LaTour. Meanwhile, Kimpton is combating the labor crisis? which is especially tough in San Francisco because of competition from the burgeoning high tech industry? by placing an emphasis on training. LaTour said employees can take classes in English as a second language, skill sets for the front desk and management supervisory training. In fact, employees who join the company actually attend what LaTour calls