PHOENIX — Graduate Hotels is passing with flying colors as it approaches its one-year anniversary of being acquired by Hilton.
Hilton made a big splash earlier this year when it acquired the university lifestyle brand Graduate Hotels for $210 million from AJ Capital Partners in March.
Parker Henderson, brand leader of Graduate Hotels, said in his two decades with Hilton, the turnaround time to get all the Graduate properties integrated was the most he's been impressed by the McLean, Virginia-based company. On Sept. 5, the last Graduate hotel remaining was transitioned into Hilton's systems.
All properties have "somebody they could reach out to in the Hilton universe. We did personalized trainings for the Graduate teams, for them to understand all of this activity that's around them, all of these resources and tools, to make it less scary to go from a very intimate brand to now you're in this huge ocean," he said in an interview with HNN at The Lodging Conference.
Graduate Hotels, which launched in 2014, has 34 active locations, 32 in U.S. college towns such as Ann Arbor, Michigan, home to the University of Michigan, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, home to the University of North Carolina. Outside the U.S., the lifestyle hotel brand’s other two properties are located in the United Kingdom in Cambridge and Oxford.
Now that it's a part of the Hilton brand, more growth can be expected. In June, Hilton announced it is expected to double the size of its lifestyle portfolio by 2028. At that time, Hilton had 350 existing lifestyle hotels across its Canopy, Curio Collection, Graduate, Motto, NoMad, Tapestry Collection and Tempo brands.
"That's really going to allow us that size and scope to be able to try new things in this space, which will be really fun," Henderson said.
But Graduate is being strategic with its growth plans, he said. Each hotel has to be a passion for both the owner and developer to tell the story of the city it's in.
"We want to make smart decisions. We want to make sure that it's the right spot. We want to make sure that it's able to tell the story of that university," he said. "We're being very deliberate in how we're looking at sites and how we're looking at conversion opportunities and new-build opportunities."
That storytelling aspect is the differentiator that makes Graduate hotels standout to competitors, Henderson said.
"We take the time to meet with locals, the students, the alumni, to find out, what are the stories of this town? Who are the local legends? What's the local lore? What's the inside joke?" he said. "Then the design teams and the owners and everybody works so hard to create these hyper-focused spaces for the hotel to bring that storytelling to life, to bring that spirit, to bring that optimism that you have in college."