Bunkhouse Hotels has been fully integrated into Hyatt's brand portfolio over the past year, and the lifestyle brand opened its latest hotel in Houston just in time for the holidays.
Hotel Daphne opened its doors this month slightly ahead of schedule, said Lisa Bonifacio, managing director at Hyatt Lifestyle, on the recent episode of the CoStar News Hotels podcast. She added the Hyatt team expects the new hotel to play a key role in its new home in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.
"It was really designed and built to be like an extended living room," Bonifacio said. "The houses in the Heights area are bungalow-style and generally smaller than some of the Houston neighborhoods, so maybe there's not room for families to stay or people that are traveling to visit friends. We wanted to be that place that was kind of the extension of the neighborhood."
To accomplish this goal, the 49-room hotel has very strategically designed communal spaces including a library, an all-day restaurant and a courtyard for guests to enjoy.
Bonifacio said the design is "arts-and-crafts-inspired," which she admits might sound a little weird, but she added the architecture is "vintage meets modern" and intended to "take the past and bring it into the future of Houston Heights."
Hotel Daphne is the second Bunkhouse hotel to deliver in the Houston area in just over a year. Hotel Saint Augustine opened a year ago in Houston's Montrose neighborhood, which is a walkable area near museums, award-winning eateries and other cultural mainstays.
The Hotel Saint Augustine has been well received by visitors and Houstonians alike, Bonifacio said. The property is anchored by the success of Perseid, the hotel's restaurant led by award-winning chef Aaron Bludorn.
"When you really want to be part of the neighborhood, you build a restaurant for the neighborhood. You don't build it for the hotel guests," Bonifacio said. "And that's what makes a hotel guest want to eat at it. ... What's going to sustain a restaurant is the people coming on a Tuesday night, not the Friday night hotel guest."
With the lifestyle hotel sector continuing to grow, Bonifacio said Hyatt is focused on differentiating its lifestyle hotels from each other, as well as from its competition. Bunkhouse and Standard, for instance, have their own brand distinctions, Bonifacio said. Bunkhouse hotels are meant to be soulful, while Standard hotels stand out as a modern, urban hotel that's "anything but standard."
"So, how do you keep them distinct, and how do you keep them different? I think it's a challenge, but it's a challenge we like and focus on a daily basis that we've been doing for a long time," Bonifacio said. "It's the passion of all of us that work on these teams and work on these hotels, so we'll continue to do so within the greater Hyatt group."
The original Bunkhouse team in Austin still works on the brand and has been brought in to work on other Hyatt entities, like JdV, Hyatt's collection of independent lifestyle hotels, Bonifacio said.
Hyatt is continuing to grow, with a specific focus on the U.S., Canada and Mexico, Bonifacio said. Standard is opening a hotel in Mexico City, a region Bunkhouse is already in.
"Our focus for Bunkhouse continues to be a lot of Texas and Mexico, so we have a few things that we're working on potentially in Mexico that we're excited about, and some more in Texas that hopefully we'll be able to announce soon," she said.
For more from the interview with Hyatt's Bonifacio, listen to the podcast interview embedded above.