Langham Hotels Parent Reinvents Eaton Hotels for Socially Minded Millennials
Photo Credit: A promotional image for Eaton Workshop, a reinvented hotel brand focused on social impact that's being launched by the parent company of Langham Hotels. Eaton Workshop
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
