Coffee. According to Craig Reid, the president and CEO of Auberge Resorts Collection, choosing a luxury hotel stay comes down to coffee. Not how you take it, but where you get it from. Today, there is a cacophony of caffeinated choices. Not too dissimilar from the panoply of hotel brands to choose from—and when it comes down to a travel decision, Reid, an avid coffee drinker, makes the comparison.
“It’s the difference between: Do you like your coffee from a Starbucks? Or, do you like your coffee from the local coffee spot?” The former is fast, reliable. The local, self-made shop is unique; it has a story behind the business and the beans.
In Reid’s world, the hotel world, his business boils down to chain versus independent. It’s a binary that Reid knows better than most: prior to his lead role at Auberge, he was 14 years with Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, most recently as president of hotel operations, Americas. Four Seasons is a luxury paradigm, prestige for its property owners, stature for those who make it a habit of staying in one. Like Starbucks, they are about as dependable luxury as one can get. Quirk, story, however, are not words typically employed in describing one.
The hotels and resorts within Auberge have those qualities, and developing and expanding on those is something Reid revels in; it’s something he can also draw experience on. Prior to Four Seasons, Reid worked for the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants, which included such London luminaries as Claridge’s, The Berkeley and The Connaught. It was there that he observed not only the competitive nature of these hotels, but also their distaste for sameness.
“The GMs would never have bought sheets from the same place or use the same stationery,” Reid said with a hint of nostalgia. “The richness of the individualism of each property was great.”
A GROWING LEGACY
A sense of bespoke is what ultimately drove Reid to Auberge Resorts, a now 27-property collection with five more in the pipeline. The hotels and resorts all carry individualistic distinction, from design down to the name. Like the landmark Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colo., and White Barn Inn in Kennebunk, Maine; the oceanside Esperanza in Los Cabos, Mexico; and the freshly opened Bowie House in Fort Worth, Texas. In fact, one of only two properties within the collection that carries the Auberge name is Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley, Calif. There’s an explanation for that: The hotel opened in 1981 as Auberge’s first hotel, back when the company was called Auberge du Soleil.
Auberge Resorts Collection (née Auberge du Soleil) was founded in 1998 by Bob Harmon and his son, Mark. The elder Harmon opened Auberge du Soleil with his business partner and friend, Claude Rouas; in fact, it was a restaurant before guest rooms and a spa were added. One could say, with confidence, that Harmon and Rouas were part responsible for the food and wine uber-destination that Napa Valley was to become, a contemporary of such standouts as The French Laundry. Harmon passed away in 2017, but the Harmon imprint on Auberge is indelible, said Reid, the more informal, “feet-in-the-sand” type luxury.
In 2014, the Harmon family began to cycle out of Auberge, selling a stake to Friedkin Capital Partners, which today is known as The Friedkin Group and led by billionaire Dan Friedkin. By 2018, Friedkin owned all of Auberge Resorts, a company that sits beside other Friedkin holdings, including Italian football club A.S. Roma, Congaree golf club in South Carolina and film studio Imperative Entertainment, whose credits include the Martin Scorsese directed “Killers of the Flower Moon.” (Friedkin, no relation to the late film director William Friedkin, is named as a producer on the film.)
Reid was brought into Auberge in 2014 and was promptly given a mandate by Friedkin to scale the company fairly quickly. “He wanted it to be a meaningful business and also one that his kids, in their 20s and 30s, could relate to,” Reid said.
According to the Peruvian-born Reid, Friedkin’s number-one ask of him was could he recruit. Reid laid the foundation for what Auberge is today by promptly bringing in four of his Four Seasons colleagues who “formed the cornerstones of the team,” Reid said.
Friedkin, according to Reid, is very hands-off when it comes to the business. “I suspect he might be more engaged if we sputtered, but we’ve had great success,” he said.
A VISION
In Auberge, Reid envisioned a luxury hospitality business that didn’t necessarily show antipathy toward branded experiences, but promoted the idea of a collection of distinct hotels, which, while all unique in design and feel, always maintained a luxury level, which is to say, once a guest stepped on property, they understood the value they were paying for.
Reid drew on other similar-minded hotel companies like Auberge that operated under a similar ethos. He characterizes the 1980s through around 2010 as in-your-face luxury, which meant the brand front and center, emblazoned everywhere you could imagine, from purses (think Louis Vuitton) to tops (Snoop Dogg… on stage… SNL… 1994… wearing a Tommy Hilfiger rugby shirt). At the same time, hotel brands like St. Regis, Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton were populating and popularizing, the name instant cachet, a label of status.
Things began to shift, Reid said. “I felt that the world was changing 15 years ago,” he said, drawing back on his coffee analogy and tying it to his own family. “My three girls are all coffee drinkers and they go to three different coffee shops,” he said, all in the Dallas area, where he lives. “One likes Drip Coffee, another likes Oak Cliff Coffee and the other likes Bluebonnet Coffee— each of their coffees fits their personalities.”
He takes that same approach to hotels and draws inspiration from other hotels and hotel companies that don’t play by brand rules. He cited Chateau Marmont, André Balazs’ pleasure-palace-cum-haute hideaway nestled off Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, and properties under Firmdale Hotels, such as Haymarket Hotel in London or Crosby Street Hotel in New York, like Auberge, absent the Firmdale name.
“Beware of sameness,” Reid warned. He compares Auberge to a manager of multiple brands—27, in fact—“and we’re trying to create that sense of independence, that sense of uniqueness, and the more we can do that, the more successful our properties are going to be.”
To Reid, luxury is simplicity, it need not be over the top. Consider Auberge’s Wildflower Farms Resort in the Hudson Valley of New York, a collection of 65 freestanding cabins and cottages that blend the outside with the inside. The property is owned by a young Brooklyn couple; naturally, products are locally sourced, like bath linens from Hudson, N.Y.-based MINNA.
Reid said that the more familiar, informal Auberge type of luxury is seeping down and even inserting itself into some of the more traditional, buttoned-up U.S. institutions. Without giving away the name, Reid recounted one large U.S. bank that chose two Auberge properties—Wildflower and Stanly Ranch, in Napa Valley, to hold meetings. “The CEO wanted to connect with the younger partners,” Reid said. “He wanted to come across as relatable. And he’s not showing up wearing a tie.”
A DIFFERENT APPROACH
This is a collection of hotels that happen to be run by Auberge, not the other way around. In that sense, Auberge works extremely closely with its owners. Consider its newest addition, Bowie House, in Fort Worth, Texas. Historically, Auberge properties have been more resort-centric, located outside cityscapes in more remote areas. Bowie House, while not downtown Dallas, is an urban retreat, whose owner, a horse breeder, wanted a “nice” place to stay when she would go to the local horse arena. (Naturally, she is good friends with Taylor Sheridan, the creator of the hit show “Yellowstone” and its multiple spin-offs.)
Since individuality is a hallmark of Auberge, it spills over into its service culture. Beyond the high-thread-count sheets and silky-sweet pillows, it’s people that deliver the experience. They are not, however, ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. If the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton are the New York Yankees, Auberge could be the Boston Red Sox, winners, too, but less stringent in presentation. Auberge, if anything else, promotes expression. “We are not conformists,” Reid said. Consider facial hair and body art: “In my former brand, the idea of beards and tattoos was uncomfortable,” he said, encouraging the hirsute to apply. “For us, that’s the modern world.” He alludes to his daughter, an artist. “Imagine buying art from someone who didn’t have tattoos,” he said.
Over time, brand houses, from Hilton to Marriott, IHG to Hyatt, have sallied forth into the so-named “soft brand” space, incorporating independent hotels into collections that harness the power of the brand, the promise of the best of both worlds. Reid doesn’t buy it. “They provide a marketing platform for someone else’s product,” he said. He notes that 70% of Auberge’s properties are either ground-up developments or conversions. “We literally go in there with our creative team; we are selecting the stone, the drapes, the woods,” he said. “It’s a craft and it’s a bit more expensive, but the customer can tell.”
At 27 hotels now and counting, Reid said Auberge is on a trajectory to reach 40 properties in the midterm. This is a hotel company that has grown out of the West Coast, reaching East Coast markets and now is going international. This year, it will open the 82-room Collegio alla Querce, in Florence, Italy. It wasn’t an easy deal. A former colleague of Reid’s introduced him to the investor who was building the hotel and his first question to Reid was: ‘Why would I hire you here when you don’t have a European presence?’ Reid responded firmly: The minute you open, we’ll put a presence. More persuasive, Reid noted that the number-one customer in Florence is the American and all the other companies the investor was looking at were European. “He bet on us,” Reid said.
Auberge is also starting to inch closer into downtown locations. It’s scheduled to open The Knox, in Dallas, in 2026.
The playbook is rather simple to Reid. Sticking to it not only grows loyalty, it grows revenue. “RevPAR is a byproduct of customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction is a byproduct of great service,” he said. “You must inspire people to deliver excellence, to command a profitable premium. Ultimately, the recipe is very simple.”