In April 1981, Bill Kimpton took hotel development down a different avenue, so to speak. That spring, the former investment banker opened the first boutique hotel—the Clarion Bedford Hotel in San Francisco, Calif. With the opening, he also founded Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, thus launching the first collection of boutique hotels. Sadly, Kimpton passed away in 2001, but his legacy endures through his company, which this month turns 30 years old, and is still growing strongly.
In those 30 years, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants has been an innovator in the hospitality industry. Today, it’s grown to 51 hotels across the United States. But through it all, the company has largely remained true to its late founder’s vision.
“What we’ve done as the years have gone on and we’ve grown from a West Coast regional company to a national hotel group is become very clear on importance of institutionalizing Bill’s vision,” says Niki Leondakis, Kimpton’s president and chief operating officer, who has been with the company for 18 of those years. “That really begins with the culture of the company. Bill’s vision played out not only in the way he defined what the customer experience would be like at our hotels but also in the way he lived his life.”
Leondakis says that as the company has grown, it’s built upon his attitudes and beliefs. “We’ve woven in who Bill was as a person, “ she says.
As an investment banker, Bill Kimpton spent a lot of time in Europe. That experience shaped his vision of hotels, according to Leondakis. “He wanted his boutique hotel experience to model what he experienced while traveling in Europe,” she says. “He loved staying in boutique hotels that where intimate, where they knew him, and they knew exactly what he liked.”
That experience became the vision for his first hotel in San Francisco. He was also focused on the hotel experience not taking itself too seriously. “He wanted a sense of playfulness and fun,” Leondakis says. “We’ve just built on all of these elements, including his sense of social responsibility.”
Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants is a hotel group built on unconventional ways. Kimpton took the initiative in its early days to create amenities such as a fully stocked honors bar, wine tasting, and boutique hotel themes. And the founder’s sense of social responsibility has led Kimpton to becoming one of the pioneers in sustainable hotel practices.
“We’re a San Francisco-based company, Bill’s vision of bringing responsible practices to every aspects of how we operate was unconventional in the 1980s,” Leondakis says.
And, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants has built on that over time. Over the last three decades, the company has standardized its operating practices and changed the way it does business every year. “It’s a continuous improvement process,” Leondakis says.
To build upon its penchant for responsible practices, and to celebrate its 30 years, Kimpton is launching a national Earth Week celebration, to be held April 15-22. The company is holding free eco-inspired events, offering amenities, and holding promotions at its 51 hotels and 54 restaurants.
Kimpton also became a pioneering company when it comes to food and beverage. “When Bill got into the hotel business, he didn’t want to be in the restaurant business because he didn’t see the profit margin,” Leondakis says. “He ultimately realized he need to have food and beverage, but his philosophy was hoteliers should run hotels and restaurateurs should run restaurants.”
That’s what led Kimpton to partner with chefs to create the restaurants in his hotels. One of the early partnerships was with Masataka Kobayashi. “That went on to become one of the best French restaurants in the country,” Leondakis says. Later partnerships included Wolfgang Puck.
“This way of doing business in the 1980s was completely unconventional, with the hotel general manager not running the restaurant,” Leondakis says.
Now, 30 years later, the company is still growing. But where is it going from here? “We are continuing to develop new hotels in all of the primary and many of the secondary markets in the country,” Leondakis says. “We’re still investing a fund that we raised. We’re still growing through fund investments and through management contracts.”