LOS ANGELES — Travel demand patterns from the past two years bode well for The Kessler Collection going forward, said Mark Kessler, president and chief operating officer of design and development for the company.
Speaking to Hotel News Now during the Americas Lodging Investment Summit, Kessler said the company that bears his family name rebounded quickly from the depths of the pandemic.
"What we've been seeing is really during the last couple of years — the pandemic and prior to that — that these leisure, drive-to destinations, which we've always focused on, have become more and more popular, and it bodes really well for us," he said. "Most of our properties were only closed for maybe four weeks."
He said their investment strategy going forward will remain similar to what has been successful for them so far: unique, high-end boutique hotels that reflect something special about the markets they sit in, which are high-growth markets in the Southeast U.S. The company's portfolio currently sits at 12 properties.
"We always thread a little bit of local education through each property to tell the story of the locale, whether its St. Augustine (Florida), Savannah (Georgia) or Charlotte, wherever you may be," he said. "We want to engage the guests and give them a reason to come back."
Kessler's next big development project is a historic adaptive reuse in New Bern, North Carolina. That luxury boutique hotel will break ground in 2023 and will have 50 rooms with 1,500 square feet of meetings and event space.
The building they're using for the project is the historic Elk Building, which is more than 100 years old and is the tallest commercial building in the market. New Bern is a small city, with less than 30,000 residents, and Kessler said the selection of the market and the building came together in a unique way.
"One of our employees' father was sailing down the coast of North Carolina, stopped over in New Bern for the day, walked around downtown, saw this beautiful Beaux-Arts building that's 100 years old and had been on sale for 20 years, caught up with his son and said, 'You guys need to come check this out,'" he said.
For more from Hotel News Now's interview with Mark Kessler, including how the JW Marriott Savannah Plant Riverside District has fared while opening in the midst of a pandemic, watch the video above.
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(Corrected on March 1 to specify New Bern's location in North Carolina in the sixth paragraph.)