SAN FRANCISCO -- The Kimpton Group, a leader in this city's
"boutique" hotel revolution, is expanding nationwide.
Kimpton -- which operates 23 hotels and 26 restaurants in
Seattle and Tacoma, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco, Los
Angeles and Chicago -- signed a contract with the General Services
Administration to develop the U.S. Post Office building in
Washington into a 200-room hotel. It will mark the company's foray
into the East Coast market, but not its last, said Steve Pinetti,
Kimpton vice president of sales and marketing.
"There are key cities we want to be in," he said. Boston and New
York are other cities that fit the Kimpton profile -- with active
urban centers that draw a mix of business and leisure travel.
Vancouver, British Columbia, is another target, with four projects
there in the discussion stage, he said.
The company was started in the early 1980s when developer Bill
Kimpton took over aging urban buildings -- many old, residential
hotels -- downtown here and transformed them into what he called
European-style boutique hotels. The properties are midpriced but
feature such unique services as afternoon wine tasting or tea
service.
In recent years, Kimpton has added variety to its properties:
larger hotels -- such as the 417-room Sir Francis Drake here, and
the 487-room Hotel Allegro, part of the Palace Theatre
redevelopment in Chicago's North Loop -- features meeting and
convention space. Kimpton also has gone upscale, opening the
Beverly Prescott in Los Angeles, the Alexis in Seattle and the
Hotel Monaco here, which the company classifies as "five star with
four star prices."
Pinetti said the Hotel Monaco -- with its vibrant, contemporary
decor themed on the romance of travel -- has been a "huge success"
and has led Kimpton to take the concept nationwide. A second Hotel
Monaco opened in Seattle last year. In September, the company is
scheduled to complete the 189-room Hotel Monaco in Denver, in a
former office building downtown.
In October, Kimpton will open its second Chicago property and
its fourth Hotel Monaco, a 193-room hotel in the former Oxford
House Hotel. In the spring of 1999, the company expects to compete
the Hotel Monaco in Salt Lake City in the former Continental Bank
building downtown. Other projects include a third property in
Chicago, an as-yet unnamed 120-room hotel in the Reliance Building
downtown.
Pinetti said Kimpton plans to expand the Hotel Monaco concept to
"eight or nine" properties, then market them together as a group.
Until then, each hotel will continue to have its own sales,
marketing and reservations department, although there will be
common logos and collateral material.