OLS Hotels and Resorts, a hospitality and management company with roughly a third of its portfolio in Hawaii, has rebranded to Springboard Hospitality.
Founded in 1988 as Outrigger Lodging Services, the company served as a management wing for Outrigger Hospitality. In the 1990s the company went independent, and the name changed to OLS Hotels & Resorts. In 2016, Ben Rafter, formally president and CEO of Aqua Hospitality, led a group that purchased and took over management of OLS. Two years later, he brought in former Highgate executive Rob Robinson as vice president with an eye toward expanding operations in Hawaii.
Properties in the Islands include the Hotel Renew, Royal Grove,
Pacific Monarch and White Sands in Waikiki; Volcano House inside Hawaii
Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii; the Banyan Harbor
Resort and Plantation Hale Suites on Kauai; and the Maui Beach Hotel in
Kahului.
"All along, the idea was to merge the 30 years of excellence OLS is known for in management with my background in emerging and web technology," Rafter said. "As we started to expand and add properties in Hawaii, we didn't want confusion and wanted a new brand that was relevant."
While the rebrand had been planned for a while, there was some thought within the company about delaying the announcement after the Covid-19 pandemic arrived.
"In the end we said: 'Why are we waiting? The industry needs some good news,'" Rafter said. "We decided to focus on expanding and keeping our team on."
The rebrand was planned to coincide with the launch of the company's new technology suite for its properties, Hospitality Intelligence (H.I.), which can be customized to meet each property's needs.
The H.I. platform is a project that was years in the making, intended to "take the best of the best in hospitality and management technologies out there and focus them so they are integrated seamlessly," Rafter said.
Vital pieces of customer information are often lost as different systems that manage bookings, revenue, social media, and other data communicate with one another.
"We picked the best-in-class tools for content management, revenue management and other areas and worked to effectively integrate them," Rafter said. "With property management, you have dozens of moving pieces and every moving piece with poor integration means you lose efficiency."
Moving forward, they hope to use that information more effectively to attract and keep customers. As the company learns more about each guest, it can then deliver tailored content based on their preferences and bookings, Rafter said.
"For us, the content and data journey starts several weeks before the consumer shows up at the hotel," he said. "We want content built and distributed long before they've entered the hotel."
While business has slowed during the pandemic, Springboard has looked for opportunities to press forward and strengthen its position when normal travel patterns resume.
This year Springboard has added Ohia Waikiki Studio Suites; the Virginian Lodge in Jackson, Wyo.; and a third property in Anchorage, Alaska, that will be renovated and relaunched in 2022. Additionally, Rafter said three more properties are lined up for acquisition before the end of the year. The vast majority of Springboard's portfolio is in the western U.S., with only two properties east of Colorado.
"When we're considering new hotels, we are looking for independent properties with tons of character that can be heavily localized to the market they are in," Rafter said.
As they look to expand, Springboard is focused on the U.S. West Coast and gateway cities such as Anchorage, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., as well as key leisure markets such as Carmel-by-the-Sea in Northern California and Sedona, Ariz.
"We want to step up and really be the next or even current great independent operator," Rafter said. "There are very few of us left since the big flags have bought up a lot of the independent operators, so we believe it's a great market niche to be in, and consumer demand is still there."
With both Rafter and Robinson experienced in the Hawaii market, the Aloha State is a key part of Springboard's long term strategy to the point that they opened a second office in Honolulu to go along with its Southern California headquarters.
"We plan to have a significant presence in Hawaii and on the mainland, with a total of 15 to 20 properties in Hawaii in the next 18 to 24 months," Rafter said.
"Our new identity, Springboard Hospitality, encapsulates our abilities to uncover opportunities, develop innovative solutions, and drive more profit for owners and investors," he said. "When I joined the company in 2016, we set out to infuse our operational success with investments in technology, people and culture, and we're looking toward continued growth and investments under our revitalized brand."