Luxury hospitality group Auberge Resorts Collection is in expansion mode, with plans to make a minimum of four additions to its 19-property portfolio over the next 12 months. Among the company's upcoming openings are Hawaii's Mauna Lani, which closed for renovation in late 2018 and will make its debut as a reimagined resort this month. Other newcomers include the Austin, Texas-based Commodore Perry Estate, which will open this spring, and Bishop's Lodge, a Santa Fe, N.M., property projected to open by late summer. Hotels editor Christina Jelski recently caught up with Auberge CEO Craig Reid to chat about the group's approach to luxury, its pipeline and a recent foray into the private membership club space.
Q: Looking back at the past decade, how have luxury tastes evolved?
Craig Reid
A: I think the rule book has been thrown out when it comes to luxury. What defined luxury in the first part of the prior decade was this whole concept of scale. The 550-square-foot room with a certain size closet and bathroom and the general opulence of it all. And now, the pivot has been more about texture, sincerity and sympathy to the world. Where is the hotel's moral compass? What is the culture of the company? There's now this idea of luxury service being efficient, fluid and intelligent. People have gravitated away from great formality -- think about how often people want to go to a very formal restaurant for dinner nowadays. They want mood, atmosphere and energy instead. People want individualism, bespoke and a distinct character and a sense of place.
Q: Auberge appears to have plenty in the pipeline. Can you talk a bit about where we can expect the company's expansion to head next?
A: In terms of our next frontiers, our most recent push was to come east, and that's what [our strategic partnership with] the Grace Hotels portfolio helped us with. We'll be developing two more properties on the East Coast soon, so we'll have seven properties in the market in total as well as our Caribbean property, Malliouhana on Anguilla. We'll also be opening a second property in the Caribbean. But the third significant frontier for us is urban, and Austin is going to be our first urban breakthrough. We're going to try to upend some of the ideas about what an urban resort should be and make it feel more like a club.
Q: How will this "club" aspect be incorporated into the Commodore Perry Estate?
A: We've launched a membership club at Commodore Perry Estate that's already active. The Austin club will be capped at 300 members, with three membership "flights." We recently opened up our first flight of 100 members, and it sold out immediately. We'll open up the second membership flight when the property opens and then the third a year after opening. In terms of membership, we don't want to be too exclusive, but we do want it to be curated in a way that's complementary to the brand. In our first batch of members, we have a couple of well-regarded local chefs and a number of artists and writers as well as some businesspeople. There are clubs like this that exist now, like Soho House, but we want to do it in a way that's much more intimate. And the whole idea is to offer our members and guests access. For example, in the spring, we'll be bringing in some Michelin-starred chefs from Napa and do a private dinner in the Commodore Perry Estate's chapel, and we'll promote these types of events to our membership base. To be able to present an experience to a hotel guest with a local member constituency just makes that experience that much more real and authentic for the traveler.