This Hotel CEO Sees a Niche for Cool Brands in Smaller Cities
Photo Credit: Dream Hotel Group's Unscripted hotel in Durham, N.C. Dream Hotel Group
Skift Take
Folks in small cities still have money to spend on trendy bars and restaurants. There’s a new playbook for high-end, lifestyle hotels that doesn’t require a massive, global city to usher in success.
There are more places than Dubai, London, or New York City to open a hip hotel, despite what major brands indicate through their portfolios.
Lifestyle hotels, a newer generation of high-end hotels that cater more to local traffic, generally focus on some of the world’s largest cities. Ennismore — which encompasses The Hoxton and Gleneagles brand as well as some of Accor’s lifestyle brands like SLS and Mondrian — largely pursues projects in major cities like London, Paris, and Dubai as well as resort destinations.
But a smaller player sees a lot of growth potential away from global gateway cities.
“Ten years ago, if you were to talk to the great lifestyle hotel companies, they would say, ‘I need to be in San Francisco, New York, Miami, L.A., and London,’” Dream Hotel Group CEO Jay Stein said in an interview with Skift. “We see Middle America.”
First thing's first: Dream Hotel Group isn’t ignoring major cities. The company has hotels in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Bangkok — to name a fe
