Kimpton Hotels Partners With Cooking Light Magazine

By Derek Gale, Senior Editor -- Hotels, 7/24/2008 3:19:00 PM

Nine months ago, Niki Leondakis, COO of San Francisco-based Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, took a few minutes to talk with HOTELS about her company’s future plans for its hotel restaurants. Earlier today, Leondakis again took time out to tell HOTELS about Kimpton’s newly-announced wellness partnership with Cooking Light magazine.

HOTELS: Why partner with Cooking Light magazine?

Leondakis: Cooking Light and Kimpton share the common value of healthy and well-balanced living. With Kimpton there’s a history of things we’ve done around healthy living—everything from our eco programs, like using non-toxic housekeeping cleaners to clean the room, to having organic products in the minibar, to offering exclusive television programming with instructionals for yoga, meditation, pilates and core strength training. People are living more integrated lives now, and people book hotels based on what kind of a wellness experience they can have while they’re staying at that hotel. People want to eat and drink great wine, and have a great hotel experience, but they want to keep healthy and fit at the same time. And that’s why Cooking Light makes sense to us.

Plus, there are some statistics, both demographically and in the lifestyle profile of a Cooking Light reader, that also align with Kimpton. As an example, Cooking Light’s 12 million readers took over 20 million trips to domestic (U.S.) locations last year. So [we can make] our hotels great destinations for those locations and reach out to that customer.

The other demographic alignment is that we have a high percentage of female travelers—more than 50%, which is higher than the industry average. And 80% of the audience for Cooking Light is female. That’s another great alignment for us.  

HOTELS: Tell us more about Kimpton hotels sponsoring and hosting the Cooking Light Supper Club series…

Leondakis: Kimpton Hotels will host 2009 Cooking Light Supper Club events at some of our hotels. Supper Club events are something that Cooking Light has been doing for a few years. The Supper Club is a touring series of high-end culinary dinners and cooking demonstrations led by Cooking Light Chef Billy Strynkowski. They have had a lot of success with this Supper Club series, so these events will come to our hotels—about a dozen Kimpton hotels will have these events.

HOTELS: Most of the time, when a Cooking Light Supper Club event is not being held on property, will there be anything at the property level that tells the hotel guest that Kimpton is partnering with Cooking Light?

Leondakis: At the moment we’re still evolving all the facets of the partnership, but we’re working with Cooking Light to create some services and amenities that will enhance the guest experience. It might be something like an insider opportunity to try out the latest product from a Cooking Light advertiser, or a culinary product sampling—we may have their chef collaborate with one of our chefs. We want to bring insider perks to our audience and their audience through the partnership.