IHG Sees Room to Take Kimpton Worldwide as Lifestyle Hotel Brand
Skift Take
Ah, the challenges of delivering quirkiness at scale.
Early Check-In
Editor’s Note: Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill brings readers exclusive reporting and insights into hotel deals and development, and how those trends are making an impact across the travel industry.Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants is a boutique hotel brand created by Bill Kimpton in 1981 in San Francisco. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) bought it for $430 million in 2014 and has been scaling it up as a mid-priced lifestyle brand.
"International is a huge part of our expansion strategy," said Kathleen Reidenbach, Kimpton’s chief commercial officer. Reidenbach has been with the brand for two decades.
Kimpton has 76 hotels in operation — up from 62 when IHG bought it. Sixteen of those are outside of the U.S., with 11 in Europe and the Middle East, two in Greater China, one in Canada, one in the Caribbean, and one in Mexico. It has 41 properties in the pipeline. Nine of those are set to be in Europe and the Middle East. Eight will be in greater China.What's the pitch to developers?
"You see the premium [rate] that we get in transient as well as group, you see it show up on the Star report," Reidenbach said. The "star report" i
