Skift Take
So many brands today say they're committed to social causes — but how many of them actually stick to those commitments? And how many of those companies are actually sustainable or profitable? Will Eaton Workshop be an exception?
Eaton Workshop may not sound like the name of a millennial-minded lifestyle hotel brand committed to "progressive social change."
But there's a reason for that, said Katherine Lo, the brand's founder and CEO.
Three or four years ago, Lo's father Ka Shui Lo, who heads up Hong Kong-based Great Eagle Holdings, asked her to reinvent the tired, generic three-to-four-star Eaton Hotels brand that he launched back more than two decades ago.
Great Eagle is also the parent company of the luxury Langham Hotels brand, and Katherine Lo, a filmmaker and entrepreneur, played a pivotal role in the development and design of Langham's flagship property in Chicago, which opened in 2013.
While her father gave Katherine Lo carte blanche to design a hotel brand to suit her tastes and that of a new generation of travelers, the one stipulation he gave her was that the Eaton name had to remain. Lo said her father had a sentimental attachment to the name because it was inspired by the grand Eaton Centre department store he visited as an international student in Montreal, a place that instilled a "sense of wonder" in him.
Lo said her father asked her to reinvent the Eaton brand as "he started to see the world changing around him in a very revolutionary way because of technology, and the business model potential of the lifestyle or boutique hotel model, versus luxury hotels."
Ka Shui Lo then decided to end all of his Eaton Hotels management contracts, only keeping the Eaton Hong Kong, which remains open but will eventually be transformed into Eaton Workshop's second hotel.
And thus, Eaton Workshop, "a new brand merging hospitality with social progress," was born. The first two properties, both revamps of existing hotels, are slated to open next year, first in Washington, D.C. with a 209-room hotel, and then in Hong Kong with 400 rooms. They would be followed by two newbuild hotels in San Francisco (180 rooms) and Seattle.
[caption id="attachment_258054" align="aligncenter" width="600"] A rendering of the Eaton Workshop D.C. hotel reception area. Source: Eaton Workshop[/caption]
The Old Eaton Versus The New Eaton
As Lo debuts this new hotel brand with an already established history, there's certainly the possibility that some consumers might confuse the old Eaton Hotels with the new. Still, she's hopeful the differences between the two will be dramatic enough for people to distinguish between the two.
"Yeah, we are definitely concerned about it," Lo sai
