Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, fueled by a recently closed $246 million hotel acquisition fund, is poised to become a bigger player in corporate hotel negotiations, said Kimpton CEO Mike Depatie.
The San Francisco-based boutique hotel company now has 42 properties open throughout the United States and Canada, with the Hotel Palomar Arlington near Washington, D.C., which opened in November, among the most recent, Depatie said. More soon will open in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Florida and Virginia.
"We as a company are getting big enough that we're kind of at critical mass," Depatie said. "Our distribution statistics are starting to look like the national chains, so we have a national sales effort and are gaining a significant percentage."
In 2007, 51 percent of Kimpton's customers were identified as business travelers, he said. About half of those were traveling under corporate negotiated rates, and the other half identified as independent business travelers.
Development recently got another boost in April with the closing of Kimpton's third institutional real estate fund. With that, the company has raised $246 million, part of a goal of acquiring more than $800 million worth of hotels over the next three years. The most recent institutional fund, which closed in 2005, now has an ownership interest in 13 Kimpton properties.
"This is a North American fund, so we're going for the major urban markets we like best: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and Washington, D.C.," Depatie said. "Some will be new-development boutique hotels, but we're also continuing to do what we always do: adaptive reuse of old, significantly historic buildings in major markets."
As an example, the Hotel Palomar Philadelphia, which began construction in February for an expected 2009 opening, is being converted from the former Architects Building, an office structure dating back to 1929. Other new properties will be rebranded existing hotels, such as the Nine Zero Hotel in Boston and the former Radisson Hotel in Washington, D.C.
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