Skift Take
Aloft Hotels was created with a 21st century-native mindset combining every next gen psychographic out there, which could become a blueprint for mid-market corporate hotel brands moving forward.
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In the mid-2000s, Starwood Hotels wanted to recreate the success of its W Hotels brand in the select service market. The company first looked at existing hotel brands for any acquisition opportunities, but none fit the required parameters. So Starwood launched Aloft Hotels in 2008 from the ground up with the same focus on global lifestyle trends as W, yet at a lower price point for the mid-tier, highly-connected hotel guest of the future.
All of the Aloft Hotels brand pillars were clearly designed to answer what's deemed today as Millennial/Gen Y demands, although Starwood executives won't define the brand as such. It's almost like, if you grabbed every hotel trend presently shaping the industry and threw them in a blender, the resulting cocktail would be Aloft.
The development pipeline is on target to surpass 100 properties by the end of 2014, which is very fast considering the global economic climate since 2008.
Previously the brand skewed heavily toward primary and secondary North American markets. Of late, there's been a more even split among new openings in domestic cities, especially near airports, business communities and university neighborhoods, and international gateway destinations from Guadalajara to Guangzhou.
Another shift taking place is the style of hotel construction. During the first few years of Aloft's development, all of the hotels were new-builds. In the last two years, there's been an increase of adaptive reuse conversions in places like San Francisco, Tucson and Dallas' historic Santa Fe Railroad terminal.
Among all of Aloft's signature brand initiatives, the alignment with the music industry is the most prominent, such as a recent collaboration with MTV Asia. The hotel group also sponsors the twice-yearly Live in the Vineyard music festival in California wine country, attracting singers like Gavin DeGraw and James Blunt. And it partners with Nylon magazine on the Project Aloft Star competition where new artists have the chance to hook up with music industry execs.
That trickles down to the hotel level worldwide at Aloft's w xyz bars and re: mix lounges, which host live acoustic performances by emerging local and national acts—branded L
