Skift Take
Journal Hotels is out to prove that you don't necessarily need to be a brand to succeed in the increasingly crowded lifestyle hotel space.
Stephen Brandman has a more than 30-year history of working in the hotel industry, including co-founding Thompson and Commune Hotels and working for more than 16 years for InterContinental Hotels Group.
In 2017, he made news again with the announcement that he would lead a new hotel management company, Journal Hotels, which was started by Goodwin Gaw and David Chang, the owners of The Hollywood Roosevelt hotel.Journal Hotels' U.S. portfolio includes The Hollywood Roosevelt, The Standard High Line, the newly opened Mondrian Park Avenue, the Ambassador Chicago (formerly known as the Public Chicago), Two Bunch Palms, and the Hotel G.
With Journal Hotels, Brandman sees an opportunity to reinvent the business model of a lifestyle hotel company, and Skift recently spoke to the CEO about that model, as well as where he sees the future of boutique and lifestyle hospitality.
On What He's Doing Differently With Journal Hotels
"What I am trying to accomplish is, in years' past I founded and owned several different companies like Thompson Hotel, and Commune Hotels and things like that. This time around, what I am really trying to do is I'm not necessarily trying to create a brand," Brandman said. "What I am trying to do is create a collection of lifestyle hotels. In years past, it was always about finding a project that had certain specific thing and then trying to brand it with the company name. And this time around, I'm not looking to do that. I'm looking to create a collection of lifestyle hotels where we can do multiple things. We can either own it, we ask to manage it, we could offer revenue management services — so there are a whole lot of things that we can do to help add value to a particular asset, as long as it lays in the lifestyle world."
Brandman sees Journal Hotels as a lifestyle-focused collection of hotels, both branded and independent, where his company can work on assets to varying degrees.
"I think what we're doing at Journal Hotels, what I'm trying to accomplish, is I'm trying to change the paradigm of what hotel companies look like," he added. "In the past, hotel companies looked after their specific name and it was about their branding. The most important thing was their branding. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to offer services to maximize the value to the owners of assets. If we feel like the best use of the property on 30th and Park Ave is to make it a Mondrian hotel, then I feel it's best to license it from Sam [Nazar
