SAN FRANCISCO Joie de Vivre Hospitality announces the appointment of Gary M. Beasley as interim chief executive officer. Founder and former CEO Chip Conley will remain with the company as executive chairman and chief creative officer.
The changes come three months after John Pritzker’s Geolo Capital acquired a majority stake in Joie de Vivre and announced intentions to take the boutique hotel brand beyond California. Beasley is a partner at Geolo. The company plans on completing a search for a permanent CEO sometime next year, at which time Beasley will return to his former role at Geolo.
Conley will share co-chairman duties with non-executive chairman Pritzker.
“I could not be more pleased in turning over the day-to-day reins of the company to Gary,” Conley says. “With his understanding of hospitality and background in finance, strategy and operations, and his demonstrated track record of successful leadership and building growth companies, Gary is ideally suited to help lead the company through this next exciting stage. This transition allows me to focus more on the fun stuff, which I really enjoy and where I feel I can add the most value, namely concepting interesting new hotels and evangelizing and building the JDV brand.”
Beasley has held roles of progressive responsibility and leadership over the course of his career across an array of industries. After earning a degree in economics at Northwestern University and receiving his MBA from Stanford University, he spent seven years with KSL Resorts, where he was instrumental in acquiring and integrating more than US$800 million of hotel and resort properties. Beasley left KSL in 2001 to join startup Internet-based real estate brokerage firm ZipRealty as its chief financial officer, where he helped reinvent its business model and lead its national growth strategy and successful IPO, eventually being named its president. Immediately prior to joining Geolo as a partner last year, Beasley was serving as president and CEO of Greenvolts, a solar technology firm.
As part of the acquisition agreement with Joie de Vivre, Geolo established an investment fund to capitalize the hotel company’s growth and national expansion, with the objective of acquiring US$300 million to US$500 million of hospitality assets over the next five years. Geolo plans to double Joie de Vivre’s revenues and grow the number of managed properties over that time period from the current 34 in California to approximately 50 throughout the United States, adding hotels and resorts in key gateway cities and resort markets through new third-party management agreements, joint ventures and acquisitions. The company anticipates announcing its first acquisition via this new capital partnership in the upcoming weeks.
In 2009, Geolo acquired Carmel Valley Ranch, an iconic 139-key resort property located on 490 acres in the lush Carmel Valley, California. The ranch joined Joie de Vivre Hotels brand this month.
