Let’s face it, wanting to live in a hotel is not a new thing. Be it Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe who once resided at the famed Waldorf Astoria in New York City or multi-millionaire Howard Hughes who lived for the longest of times at The Beverly Hills Hotel. A check in at the Hotel California as the Eagles sang, means you never have to leave.
With a growing number of global hotel chains new getting serious about branded residences, one upstart that has caught my eye is the US –based Proper Hotels. More formally known as Proper Hospitality the chain in the brainchild of former Viceroy Hotels executive Brian De Lowe. This time out though unlike his former boutique bent, the offering is bringing a more related residential vibe to guests.
The new offering is twin brands named Proper and Avalon, with properties now set in Hollywood, San Francisco, Austin and Downtown Los Angeles. For hotel and residence guests a fulltime concierge is focused on what the brand describes as being “One part cultural engineer, one part cruise-ship director, consider them a modern version of the elite concierge that has serviced the most demanding guests for centuries.”
Proper is taking on both retrofit project and new-build sites that often fit into a mixed-use model. At the core of the offering is tracing back roots to that of a more community focused brand that offers the best of local amenities instead of going vanilla into the blazing sun of highly uniform same sames.
As Asia has seen a burst of hotel branded residences over the past five years, the US after it crawled out of the dark shadow of the Global Financial Crisis, has once again seen a spur with investment oriented real estate properties. Hence we are seeing a spike in new groups that are willing to get into the box of hotel residences.