At last year’s Lodging Conference, B Hotels launched its first product in Fort Lauderdale, FL. In the midst of economic uncertainty, the brand forayed into the land of boutique hotels in Florida. Now, with a hotel running strong, the brand is expanding and just announced its second B Hotel in South Beach. Christopher Tompkins, the corporate VP & marketing director of B Hotels & Resorts, sat down with GlobeSt.com to discuss the future of the brand and what makes a boutique hotel.

GlobeSt.com: When are you set to launch the second property?

Chris Tompkins: We actually announced the hotel in June and the renovation process will start in the next 30-60 days. And then we’ll actually open in the fourth quarter of 2012. The nice part there is we’ve already announced the brand last year, so now we can aggressively start marketing, selling that hotel. We’ll start there in late November, early December, at the very latest January. We’re at almost at a solid nine to 12 months to really ramp that hotel. So we’ll be aligned in the competitive set.

GlobeSt.com: You get a little bit of a better jump than the last one.

Tompkins: When I opened up the W, I had a year and a half to ramp that hotel, prior to opening; same thing for the Hard Rock, same situation. You generally want to have a sales time of about 12 months to 14 months before the actual opening. We were starting to sell the hotel, but we were very cautious about letting our name out for the Ocean B Hotel & Resort, because we really wanted to make a bang in the industry and say, “hi, here we are” and then follow that on the consumer side to say, “hey, you have another alternative to choose from.” It’s worked very, very well.

GlobeSt.com: Are you concerned about the economy? The first half of the year was pretty good for hotels, now it’s slowed down quite a bit.

Tompkins: Well, I go back to it, and respectfully because you’re in the media, but the media literally made the foundation for a self-perpetuating prophecy and that is that fact that when the media says things are not looking so good—and/or individuals go to the media and they report on that, then if you go back to 2008, a lot of what happened was our own business psyche and our own business acumen began to roll that downward. Whereas if everybody had said, “Stop, it’s all okay. Let’s all work together and let’s turn this baby around.” I don’t think we would have had that situation. And if we’re not careful, we’re going to do the same damn thing again in this particular cycle. Because it’s not so much that everyone here is doom and gloom, it’s that we’re being told of doom and gloom.

GlobeSt.com: You don’t think hotels came back faster than office and industrial, you don’t think hotels grew too fast, inflating prices?

Tompkins: I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think if everyone would come back together to jump start our economy the way we need to, banks have got to lend, consumers have got to feel confident that they can buy, and that they’re going to have a job. And if we…if we promote doom and gloom, we’re going to have doom and gloom. It’s like catching a cold, if you think you’re catching a cold, you’ll invariably get a cold.

I think we have to get back into a more positive mindset. Last year, consumers started to travel again, from airlines to hotels, etc. When people see the RevPAR indexes growing, they say, “wow they’re at a 6% RevPAR index,” well the bottom is pretty damn bottomed-out, so we’re not even near where we were in the 2008 levels. So, we’re seeing growth, but we’re not at the bottom by any means, so let’s not go further down before we start going back up again.

GlobeSt.com: And as far as the new hotel coming out. What are you looking at your opening occupancy?

Tompkins: South Beach is a very unique market. Fort Lauderdale’s a very unique market, just like San Francisco’s a very unique market, New York is a very unique market. Anytime you have the ability to capitalize on business travel, certainly leisure travelers, vacation travelers, travelers going out on the cruise ships and the domestic, North America…but also South American, even if one economy is shaky, there’s another economy right behind it.

Look at the emerging markets in South America and look at how well they’re doing, the emerging markets over in Asia. And it’s still the United States of America, people still see this as a phenomenal place to visit, there’s so much to see and do.

GlobeSt.com: You are a boutique-style hotel, but you have two hotels. How are they different from each other and how are they the same?

Tompkins: What’s unique about the brand and that we have three founding elements and they are: design, destination and the approachability. The first key point there is destination, because what really dictates the feel of that particular property is tying the d

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6 Questions with B Hotels & Resorts Christopher Tompkins

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