The Lifestyle Hotel Collection That’s Courting the Meetings Industry
Photo Credit: Lake Austin Spa Resort caters to corporate retreats and wellness incentive programs. Lake Austin Spa Resort
Skift Take
An independent lifestyle hotel collection specifically geared for corporate meetings seems like an inspired idea. The challenges include building brand awareness and convincing corporate procurement departments to work with independent hotels.
The lifestyle hospitality sector has exploded in the last two years with the rise of new corporate, independent and "soft" brands promising a better guest connection to the local destination.
Joining that trend in October 2014, Kindred Resorts & Hotels is a new marketing consortia consisting of 58 independent lifestyle hotels, created along the same lines as Preferred Hotels or Destination Hotels, but with a focus squarely aimed at the corporate meetings market.
Members range from smaller regional properties like the 60-room Hacienda del Sol Guest Ranch Resort in Tucson to the iconic 540-room Breakers in Palm Beach.
The network itself is not new. It actually dates back three decades to when the properties first banded together to buy group insurance in bulk to lower their fees.
"Many of them are family owned and there's a lot of synergies among their businesses, so a few years ago they got together and asked, 'How else can we leverage the group model for the
