Rivalries Between Boutique Hotels Heat Up in College Towns
Photo Credit: Shown here is the lobby at the Graduate Berkeley in California. Graduate Hotels has grown to 22 hotels near college campuses in six years. It plans to continue its expansion, especially in key urban centers such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Graduate Hotels
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Graduate Hotels has grown to 22 hotels in college towns in six years. Now it intends to face down new competition by branching out to larger urban markets where it can continue to appeal to people involved in universities but also attract other clientele.
Ben Weprin, founder of the boutique Graduate Hotels chain that launched in college towns in 2014, had a specific number of properties he wanted to have waving the brand flag by 2020. That number was 20.
Graduate Hotels has achieved that, even in the midst of growing competition from other boutique brands and even larger hotel conglomerates such as Marriott International and Hilton that realize the value of appealing to a college campus' captive audience.
The first Graduate Hotel opened in Athens, Georgia near the University of Georgia. Subsequent properties have been introduced in college towns such as Oxford in Mississippi, Lincoln in Nebraska, and Tempe in Arizona. Weprin’s AJ Capital Partners develops Graduate Hotels.
So what’s next for Graduate Hotels? The plan for the independent brand is to graduate to larger cities where they can appeal to not just prospective students, visiting parents, alumni, professors, and patients at on-campus medical facilities.
While the
