Chip Conley and his JDV Hospitality Group have taken over managing the 130-room beachfront Vacation Village in Laguna Beach, just five blocks from the city's downtown.
The move is part of the company's plan to double its hotels in the next five years.
Joie de Vivre now has 35 hotels and expects most of its growth to be in Southern California.
It already has hotels in the Brentwood-Westwood area, Studio City and Long Beach and will manage the Shorebreak Hotel in Huntington Beach slated to open early next year.
Vacation Village just underwent a $2 million room renovation last year so we doubt that it will need much sprucing up. But it will of course, need the complimentary JDV WiFi.
The hotel also two pools, a whirlpool and a 4,000-square-foot private residence, Pacific Edge, available for groups of up to 65 for events. So like, kids can hold their after-prom parties here or their "we just wanna party because we can" parties.
And we really hope that Chip and co. have a hotel-naming contest here. What would you call this place? The Real O.C. Hotel?
Hotelier Chip Conley of JDV Hospitality, has a new hotel opening on June 1 in Santa Cruz.
Originally known as the Central Coast Hotel, JDV wanted to re-christen the place, The Dream Inn which was once the hotel's name in a former lifetime. Unfortunately, there were some trademark issues there. (Hmm...Vikram Chatwal perhaps?)
But JDV managed to work out an agreement so that the property will be called The Santa Cruz Dream Inn. You can read all about the "Naming Contest" the hotel held with locals here.
According to Good Times Weekly, the hotel will open in phases. On June 1 the renovated 100-room tower will open. On July 1, a secondary low-rise building will open.
So what's inside? Pretty standard JDV stuff, which we don't mind really.
The new guest rooms and suites will be furnished with such amenities as designer linens, down duvets and pillows, in-room binoculars, ergonomic chairs, extra-large flat screen HDTVs, CAT-5 Internet connectivity, surfboard and bicycle storage and, of course, iPod docking stations.
JDV is hoping to get a four-star luxury rating out of the renovation and will seek both business, leisure and surfer travelers a like.
Have you ever wondered how great companies get their mojo? No? Well you probably wouldn't be interested in Chip Conley's new book then. But if you're hoping to grow your hotel brand, you'd better listen up.
The book, Peak, explains the hotelier's management strategy, which he attributes to famed psychologist Abraham Maslow. Basically, Maslow argues that people perform well when they're needs are being met and do even better when they're self-fulfilled. What that means for a boutique hotel owner is that your customers can't be happy if the staff isn't happy.
It all sounds a little new age-y to us, but you can't deny that Conley's brand, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, is booming or that his employees don't appreciate his efforts. (To wit: his housekeepers love their brand new vacuum cleaners.) If you find yourself not self-actualized by reading just this book, remember Conley has two others out in paperback: Marketing That Matters and The Rebel Rules.
Chip Conley of Joie De Vivre Hospitality wins this award for 2007 not only because was he the first hotelier to kick-off our new feature, Pitch Your Hotel (although that helped) but also because in 2007 Chip pushed on in expanding JDV to new locations (nothing outside of California though) while at the same time, remaining very true to the philosophy of JDV--the joy of life.
When we asked Chip why there were no JDV hotels outside of California he told us this:
I think that's because we are conscious of what JDV is all about. We describe our hotels as hand-crafted and soulful and we want to make sure they are still close to home.
This past year, Chip opened Hotel Tomo in San Francisco's Japantown (even holding a "Name that Hotel" contest before it opened), weathered two complaints of racial profiling at his hotel by publicly apologizing in a newspaper column for the treatment of a guest by his hotel staff and continued to scope out new locations for JDV Hotels. Coming up next? Sacramento and Santa Cruz.
Not only do we love him but so do his employees. The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about how Chip's management techniques have kept his staffers happy by offering sponsoring parties and awards, arranging paid annual retreats for employees, and offering free classes from computer courses to English as a Second Language.
Another example of how Chip tries to keep things fun? For JDV's 20th anniversary party, nearly 10,000 California residents named Joy were invited to the party.
·Chip Conley: Housekeepers at the Carlton Hotel in San Francisco love the new vacuum cleaners they get every year. In fact, employee satisfaction ratings took off since Conley's JDV Hospitality firm took over.
· Jason Pomeranc: With Thompson Beverly Hills and the Hollywood Roosevelt out on the West Coast, Jason Pomeranc has purchased a home in the Hollywood Hills that was once owned by Bobby Darin. But its not a singing career we think Pomeranc is after. We think once he's done with hotels (or is he already?) he will get into film. It's the Hollywood Way!
· Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson: Regarding the Hotel Riverview the duo appeared before the community board. Some plans for the hotel include restoring its original look, including re-building an octagonal cupola on the roof. Some more good news, apparently a liquor license is expected to be approved.
If you know a wealthy hotelier, you might want to start buttering them up right now. And if you are related to a hotelier, well shoot, you better think of some way to make sure you're in their will. Leona Helmsley left her fortune to her dog Trouble and not to any of her grandkids or great grandkids. We knew she was mean but whoa. That dog is kinda cute though.
While Jason Pomeranc's 6 Columbus keeps working out the kinks, Chip Conley's newest hotel, Hotel Tomo is set to start taking reservations on June 1.
The hotel used to be the Best Western Miyako Inn in San Fran's Japantown but the only thing that remains is the Best Western handle. Inside Hotel Tomo, you will find lots of Japanese pop-culture artwork, (think anime), 26-inch LCD flat-screen TVs, iPod docking station and radio, J-Pop wall murals and what looks like Ugly Dolls on each bed.
There's also a restaurant called Mum's which specializes in shabu-shabu -- "thinly sliced meat and vegetables cooked at your table in an iron hot pot, and served with savory, special, house dipping sauces."
But the best part might be the two "gaming suites" available which include PS3 and Wii, bean bags, sofa bed, 6-foot LCD projection screen, microwaves and mini-refrigerators (What? No Guitar Hero??)
Hotelier. The word is so romantic, so eccentric, so...French. However, run-of-the-mill real world hoteliers don't always live up to the etymology. Many hoteliers tend to talk about their rooms as commodities that they hope to sell by the click to you, hotel mavens. Others constantly complain that the online hotel review game has made it extremely difficult to get their hotel message to guests.
Always looking to bring you the most pertinent information on the worldwide hotel scene, we figured when we found hoteliers that were worthy of the French pronunciation of the word, we would let them speak to you directly. Besides, before you dropped a bunch of cash to stay at someone's house, wouldn't you want to get to know the owner a bit? Exactly. We, always oh so full of ourselves, are calling this series Hoteliers That Matter and we are sitting down with these hoteliers and letting them tell you, straight from their mouths to web ears, what you need to know about their hotels.
Quick Clip: Click To Play Watch as Chip Conley, ever the media professional, skillfully ignores his vibrating cellphone to tell us about JDV Hospitality.
To kick off our series, we were fortunate enough to sit down with San Francisco-based Chip Conley of JDV Hospitality. Conley started his hotelier career when he was 26-years-old with the Phoenix Hotel in San Fran's Tenderloin neighborhood. He succeeded into turning this hotel, in an otherwise dingy city neighborhood, into the hotel of choice for rock n' rollers and musical acts playing in the city.
Since then, Conley has spent the past 20 years building up his brand from this one rock n' roll hotel to more than 40 boutique hotels, restaurants and dayspas.
On the horizon for Conley is naturally, the ever-popular hotel and brand expansion. But don't expect JDV to hit the East Coast. For now, Conley is content to keep JDV a California experience.
The full Q&A with JDV Hospitality's Chip Conley after the jump.
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by juliana
