Late last year, Hyatt closed on its acquisition of Standard International and Bunkhouse Hotels — two lifestyle brands with hotels around the world. Austin-based Bunkhouse’s first two new hotels under the Hyatt umbrella are both in a new market for the company: Houston.
Bunkhouse has been in the hotel business for 25 years — the last 10 of which have been with Standard International having majority ownership of the lifestyle brand. In October, Hyatt acquired the brand duo in a $335 million deal.
Despite the ownership change, guests shouldn’t see much difference in their experience at Bunkhouse hotels, said Lisa Bonifacio, president and general counsel at Bunkhouse.
“We're really happy with how Hyatt has wanted to keep the DNA of Bunkhouse intact, keeping the Austin office and all people here who have contributed to making the hotels where they are and continue to do so with the same spirit of creativity that we've always had,” she said. “In the end, hopefully our owners of our hotels and our guests will benefit from the Hyatt systems.”
One thing that will change, for the better, as Bonifacio said, is Bunkhouse hotels being added into Hyatt’s loyalty program, World of Hyatt.
“We’ve had people ask us for loyalty point systems for years and now we'll officially be part of a big one,” Bonifacio said, adding that the implementation process is still ongoing.
New era, new market
Bunkhouse’s latest addition to its portfolio is the Hotel Saint Augustine, which made its debut in December. The Hotel Daphne will follow later this year with each hotel set in two of Houston’s trendiest neighborhoods — Montrose and the Heights, respectively.
“I think there's a lot of great hotels in Houston. I think what we're hoping to achieve is something a little bit different than those and less traditional,” Bonifacio said.
Bunkhouse has a dozen hotels in Texas, Mexico, California and Kentucky, and Houston is the third market in Texas, where the majority of its hotels are located. Bonifacio they’ve been eyeing an expansion into Houston for a few years.
“The more we come to Houston, the more we like Houston,” she said. “I think there's a lot of to uncover in Houston. There's so much diversity, there's so much going on that you really feel like it takes time to get yourself in the market, but once you do, there's a lot to see and there's a lot to be a part of.”
Bunkhouse has five hotels and three restaurants in its homebase of Austin, with another hotel and eatery nearby in San Antonio.
“We have a big community in Texas, and we have a lot of people that know us here in Texas,” Bonifacio said. “We've been looking at the Houston market for a long time, trying to get a project in the right space and that was the right opportunity for us, and I think we found two really great opportunities.”
Neighborhood-driven concepts
Bonifacio explained that Bunkhouse’s specialty is really drilling into the communities it’s working in, avoiding plug-and-play hotels. You shouldn’t be able to pick up a Bunkhouse hotel and move it anywhere, she said.
For the Hotel Saint Augustine, which opened in a residential area in Houston anchored by an art museum called The Menil Collection, an arts organization founded in the 1950s by John and Dominique de Menil, who later opened the museum in 1987. Rather than double down on the art concept, Bonifacio said the team’s designers — which include New York-based design studio Post Company and Texas architects Lake Flato — didn’t want to step on the toes of the iconic art scene next door.
“We knew the museum collection was so inspiring that we probably can't compete with it, so we created the hotel space itself to kind of be a reflection of what the original founders' homes would look like — not necessarily the art that's in the museum,” Bonifacio said.
Hotel Saint Augustine is spread across two acres and has 71 rooms and suites, a lounge and bar, a pool, event space and a destination restaurant led by award-winning chef, Aaron Bludorn. A main feature of the hotel is its extensive landscaping, which is also a feature of Austin’s Hotel Magdalena.
Bonifacio said that is meant to be “a lush environment, kind of a little bit of an escape for after you know visit a museum or your day around Montrose.”
Opening a second hotel in the market was always the strategy for Bunkhouse, Bonifacio said, explaining that it makes sense from an operational and shared resources perspective. The Hotel Daphne is set to open later this year, and Bunkhouse hasn’t released full details yet, but the 49-room hotel will also have a restaurant and bar, plus a courtyard, library, and lobby retail shop. Just like the Saint Augustine, the Daphne will be reflective of the community.
Bunkhouse also opened the first satellite location of its Austin coffee shop concept, Jo’s Coffee, home to the city’s “I Love You So Much” wall, in the Houston Heights neighborhood this month.
Future of lifestyle
The Hyatt acquisition was strategic for the brand’s expansion of its lifestyle division, Dan Hansen, head of Americas development and global head of Hyatt Studios, told HNN in a video interview.
He said that the acquisition of the “iconic brands of Standard and Bunkhouse and the newest brand StandardX has allowed us to increase our pipeline of lifestyle hotels by 50% compared to our record pipeline for Hyatt of 138,000 rooms, so the future’s very bright.”
From Bunkhouse’s perspective, the lifestyle industry is ripe for growing business — and it’s not a matter of being upscale or having a high price point, but providing a curated experience, Bonifacio said.
“I think people are really starting to discover that they can stay in a place that actually has a sense of has a place without spending a lot of money,” she said. “Lifestyle doesn't mean it's expensive. Lifestyle just means it's a different type of product — a lot of energy, care, thoughtfulness and research that goes into building a lifestyle hotel."
She said it requires doing your homework on a community, tapping the right people to help in discovery and investing in local programming over big national marketing campaigns.
“I don't think lifestyle is a fad,” Bonifacio continued. “We've been doing it for 25 years, and I think that it's just becoming more mainstream because I think people are discovering that it's just another way to travel without necessarily spending more to do so.”