Select-service owner-operator Vision Hospitality Group is setting up a separate division for its growing boutique hotel platform because, among other things, it wants to break with the traditional hierarchical structure of hospitality groups. It’s less about tenure and more about someone’s experiences, said Vision’s Director of Brand Strategy for Boutique & Lifestyle Hotels Ashley Ewing Parrott. “We really need to focus on people who are thinking ahead, versus thinking about what works today and what worked yesterday and what might work tomorrow,” she said.
Enter Humanist, the new division of Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Vision Hospitality, which will develop boutique properties under a newly launched Kinley brand (projected ADR US$160-190), as well as with individual and even branded boutique properties. The first member of the new group is its existing Edwin hotel in Chattanooga, which is co-branded under Marriott’s Autograph Collection. The first Kinley hotel is expected to debut in Cincinnati in late 2019, followed by Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2020. The Grady Hotel, set to open next year in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, will also sit under Humanist.
Following multiple trends of the day, Vision stated that Humanist will focus on developing properties that foster meaningful human interactions, immersive experiences and community engagement. It will specialize in developing on its own or with JV partners in up-and-coming cities and neighborhoods.
HOTELS spoke to Parrott when the brand debuted last week to learn more about how the new group will sit along side Vision’s 34 premium-select and full-service hotels affiliated with Hilton, Marriott and InterContinental brands. Here are some of the highlights.
HOTELS: Tell us more about the Humanist launch.
Ashley Ewing Parrott: We are in the final stages of launch. Our office space will actually be on the second floor of the VHG headquarters, and we are finishing up that space at the end of November, so we will be officially launched at that point. Today, we are announcing the launch of the hospitality group. Our website, social media will be up by the end of next week. Our goal is to be live with everything by the end of November.
H: Explain the name and essence of the group.
AEP: Humanist is bringing the sole priority of hospitality back to its most important element, which is people. So its about that person to person, that human to human interaction, whether that’s us as an ownership group with our associates, or our associates with our guests, or how our brand interacts with other brands, and most importantly how we as a company interacts with our communities.
H: How will the group be structured?
AEP: As we pursue growth, we will take lifestyle hotels and house them our placemaker division, and then all of our restaurants and bars will be housed under our tastemaker division… Ultimately, the goal is for it to also be its own management company.
H: How will Humanist properties operate differently?
AEP: The way that we recruit must be different, the type of person that we want to surround ourselves with, and the way that they think about things, the way they approach service, it all has to be different. Ultimately, it’s all about hiring people with great attitudes across both Vision and Humanist, but ultimately we want people who think outside of the box within this organization… As we develop and put together our leadership team, what’s most important to us is that the leadership team act as an equal kind of voting, membership team. Everyone has an equal vote, everyone’s voice is heard equally.
H: How aggressive will the group be with growth?
AEP: Far more strategic, and we will not grow at the same rate that Vision Hospitality grows. I don’t think that we want to. It’s more of a boutique shop in that we’re only developing projects that really fit with our vision for how we want this to go. So, ultimately, probably in a perfect world in the next five years we’ll have 10-plus properties on the hotel side of things and eight to 10 restaurants.
H: You will manage F&B components separately from the hotels?
AEP: Indeed. We will operate separate F&B operations that work in conjunction with hotels. We also have our first Starbucks, which opened in June of this year, and it will roll under Tastemaker. We are not leasing F&B space at this time – we will self operate. While we do have a celebrity partnership in Cincinnati, for Watercress, currently the plan is to work as a partner with his management company. We retain all rights to the name and the brand, which we developed with Chef, but all of the rights to the menu, recipes, things of that nature will be with him. Chef has a management company who will work in conjunction with the Kinley Cincinnati crew on running all operations in the hotel.
H: Vision Hospitality will own and manage all the hotels under Humanist?
AEP: Yes, they will be owned, or we are open to exploring JV situations, but we will be managing all our projects.
H: Will Kinley be the big growth vehicle?
AEP: Kinley will be the flagship of Humanist. It will be the bread and butter, but we approach each development opportunity uniquely without an overarching or predetermined idea of what we want to go there, and that’s one of the things that helped spawn the creation of Humanist. It’s really more about digging into what fits best in the community, and makes sense from a business perspective.
H: What else can you tell us about what you are trying to accomplish here?
AEP: I guess it’s welcoming fresh perspectives. It’s the reason that we feel as a leader in the select-service development world it was time for us to become a leader in the boutique and lifestyle and food and beverage as well. We’re learning here. We’re still growing, which I think makes it a very exciting time to be a part of our company. We recognize that you can’t continue to do what you’ve always done and expect new results, right?