Leveraging the Importance of Family Time as a Brand and Marketing Strategy

Episode Transcript

Keir Weimer: I think a lot of us to touch on what you just shared get so focused on the external things that we think we need to be doing. The rat race of life, climbing the corporate ladder, keeping up with the Joneses, spend. Then we lose track of what it actually means to feel alive and to be alive and to live a fulfilling life. And for us, that doesn’t involve any of that stuff I just said. That simply involves doing fun stuff, creating epic memories with the people that you love and care about, and doing it and inspiring locations outdoors and this beautiful world that we have at our fingertips. That’s what we’ve lost sight of. And that’s what COVID reset into the core focus of our conscience and allowed us to realize what’s truly important in life. And our goal and part of our mission is to make sure we don’t forget that going up.

Robin Trimingham: Welcome to The Innovative Hotelier podcast by HOTELS magazine, with weekly, thought-provoking discussions with the world’s leading hotel and hospitality innovators.

Robin Trimingham: Welcome to The Innovative Hotelier, brought to you by HOTELS magazine. I’m your host, Robin Trimingham. Are you a boutique hotelier in a rural area looking for a way to refresh your brand and attract a new generation of travelers to your front door? Then this episode is for you. Join me now to learn how a seemingly unsellable small-town resort property inspired a brand concept and development plan for a chain of boutique properties which leveraged the need for quality family time and the spirit of the outdoors as a marketing strategy. My guest today, Keir Weimer, founder of The Weekender Hotels, is here today to offer insights regarding breathing new life into wilderness retreats. Join me now for my conversation with Keir.

Robin Trimingham: FOH is a global food service and hospitality company that manufactures smart, commercial-grade solutions. Headquartered in Miami, the company designs and manufactures all their restaurant and hotel products. They have showrooms and distribution centers located throughout the globe, and their products are always in stock and ready to ship from any of their distribution centers worldwide.

Robin Trimingham: Welcome, Keir. It’s great to get a chance to chat with you today.

Keir Weimer: Likewise, Robin. It’s great to be here.

Robin Trimingham: I was pretty interested when I started reading a little bit about your hotel brand, The Weekender. Set the stage for us here a little bit. What inspired you to run off and create a hotel brand?

Keir Weimer: Sure. A couple of things that went into what I like to call the inception story. One was -a little bit of context- I bought my first resort back in 2015, while I was still running a few other businesses. It was more of like a passion project, to see if this can work. No experience in hospitality, project management, renovation, any of that. We had two restaurants, 30 rooms, weddings and events on this beautiful lake in upstate New York in the Adirondack Mountains. That was very much a pretty amazing project. But that project was what I would later realize, really, the core start of my, I would call it passion. That became what is now Weekender, which was formed in the middle of the pandemic in spring of 2021, when everybody was like, ‘what are you doing creating a hospitality brand in a pandemic?’ But when I started to see travel change, when I started to see the demographics of how people were experiencing the great outdoors, craving activities, clean air environments, the mountains, lakes, it really breathe life and wind into the sails of this whole thesis and strategy of Weekender, which was really to be a conduit, a setting and a place to help connect and host people, to do just that, to get back to the great outdoors, to get into nature, to actively participate in their vacations, and to do it at beautiful design-forward hotels that were smart, equipped with it and really fully renovated in pretty iconic destination. So it was the inception story again with one part had done it at one location was doing really well. COVID hit, saw the market changing and the demand changing, and saw that this one location could become an entire brand and a portfolio and a platform.

Robin Trimingham: I’m intrigued because I had a little look at your background and it indicated that you have, you know, been involved in public speaking and inspiring other people. Why start a hotel chain at all? Why not just host retreats at other well-established locations? It’s like a hard way into all of this that you’ve chosen.

Keir Weimer: Yeah, that’s certainly one way to look at it. I think for me, my passions were starting to evolve and change, but still came back to this core focus I had in terms of how I like to live my life, the values with which were important to me, and how I also personally traveled. So growing up at a young age, parents instilled a love for travel, for learning new cultures, exploring new areas. We visited several different countries before I was out of high school, and I had the privilege of getting introduced to what travel can do for the soul, for the mind, for the body. So for me, that along with the other things that I think make hospitality amazing, which is physical space, curation of an experience, design that had the other elements. As a business person who was trained in real estate, finance and investment, NYU and business at undergrad at Syracuse, it had the elements of finance, markets, underwriting, capital markets, acquisitions, all those things that kind of serve that side of my brain. But it still had this really creative element that allowed me to experience what is and that what could be. So, it’s we acquire properties as almost a blank canvas because we almost always renovate them completely, all the rooms, interiors, common areas, exteriors into this new reimagined experience. So, for me, that was such a fun and stimulating part of all this. And then to full circle to your question is now, once that’s done, it provides an amazing setting that’s just for myself, but for others to come in and host amazing and inspiring offsite retreats, gatherings, yoga retreats, weddings, sales and company leadership events. So they’re very closely adjacent and connected. But for me, I just really wanted to build something that was bigger than myself and my own aspirations around speaking and inspiring and helping others, and this provides a way to do that. It’s a setting in a conduit for others.

Robin Trimingham: Well, that makes sense. Talk to me a little bit. What was the learning curve like when you’re suddenly taking on and completely renovating a property? I get the real estate background, actually, my very first job out of college, believe it or not, was in real estate as well. So, I can understand the passion for buying and selling property and investment and all of that. What was it like to suddenly find yourself a construction engineer if you will?

Keir Weimer: Yeah, I gotta tell you, Robin, it was definitely a learning curve. I had a former life. I was a luxury real estate broker and owner of a team that we basically focused on high end, unique and distinctive properties throughout upstate New York. And I was, surprisingly enough, the listing broker on this first resort I bought. When I became interested as a buyer and owner, I recused myself in that role from representing the seller and started to put on a different hat. But for me, it was definitely a learning curve and the project management and renovation side, because I didn’t have that background in construction and estimating and understanding and managing bidding contracts, managing GCS and different subs. But I stepped right into it. I served as that de facto role for that first project. And frankly, several of our early projects and Weekender in 2021 and 2022, and then we hired that capacity because it’s I just had other things that needed to focus on, but it was a curve. It was reading a lot of books, talking to a lot of people, learning by failure, learning by doing, learning by lesson and experience. And we definitely had a few projects that went pretty considerably over budget and timeline, which were painful, costly lessons par for the course. Certainly, if I went back, I would have done a little bit differently, maybe hired more professional owner representation or help in that project management area earlier. But you live and you learn, and as a young startup, you do make some mistakes and you learn from them.

Robin Trimingham: I’m a learn-by-doing person myself so I can respect the approach. Talk to me, though, about launching in 2021. Talk about your soft launch in some respects. What was that like?

Keir Weimer: So, we actually launched, let’s see, would have been June of 2022. So we started the company officially in April 2021.

Robin Trimingham: Okay.

Keir Weimer: But didn’t publicly launch it until a big event up at our flagship resort, Great Pines. The first one I mentioned to you up on a lake in the Adirondacks at our inaugural what we call ‘Camp Weekender event, where we invite the public, our team, their family, local business leaders and everybody. It was this amazing event with live music and amazing food and programming and hiking and swimming and boating. It was really cool and it was a big nostalgic throwback to what it’s like old summer camps, right? Growing up. And that’s when we officially announced Weekender. So again, what is that? Not even 18 months ago? And it was just that it was head down building the team, the early projects, the portfolio, and now we’re eight projects and properties. Now we have in three states, and we’re mostly in New York, in upstate New York, in the Adirondack Mountains, uh, 6 million acre state park. That’s half public, half private land. We’re now in southern Vermont and Manchester and also in southern New Hampshire, and looking to expand the brand over the next year to additional New England markets. So Catskills, Hudson Valley, places like the Berkshires, northern Vermont, New Hampshire, maybe even Maine. And then we do have aspirations to bring the brand into different regions of the US. But right now we’re focusing on what we know really well these northeast markets. We’re keeping the understanding and the expansion, how I would call it measured or reasonable because we do have a shifting market and a much different interest rate environment that affects a lot of our business on the acquisition front. And then just in a far different world now in a macro sense, than we were 12 or 15 months ago.

Robin Trimingham: Yeah, that’s quite an aggressive expansion plan. How are you finding the capital markets for all of these projects? You obviously have everybody’s attention if you’re managing to expand this rapidly.

Keir Weimer: Yeah, good question. Up till about six months ago on the last two projects, I was self-funding most of the entire growth of the company, the early projects, the early acquisitions, early down payments, the early investments, and what we call the management company or HQ. And then recently in the last two hotels, we did bring in what we call friends and family, some investors, but we still have a very limited small group, small cadre of about 5 or 6 investors now. And we do intend to launch our first fund in January. So that will be a little bit more formalized, a little bit more going to more traditional capital markets, if you will, on the equity side to raise some capital to help us for this next 15 months of the acquisitions and growth. And so that’s how we’ve been doing it. A little bit of what I would call bootstrapping or founder-funded. Now we’re starting to open the doors and bringing in some investor capital. And then on the debt side, we’ve been using primarily regional and local banks and also partnering with the Small Business Administration. They have a great couple of loan programs for businesses like ours that allow some renovation budget component. So, we’ve been using a lot of SBA partnerships with these banks as well.

Robin Trimingham: I was pretty fascinated when I read about your, I’m going to call it approach to all of this, because you are using the idea of prioritizing family time as a primary marketing strategy. How did you come up with that?

Keir Weimer: I would say that’s definitely one of our core demographics or customer or guest groups that we like to cater to and build amenities and products around and then market to. The others would be younger Gen Z, millennial couples or single as well as a little bit older demographic. So we spread the gamut, if you will, of people that end up becoming guests and repeat guests of Weekender as a brand in different hotels. I think the family component is a big anchor to that, because the family unit is such an important part of life, and such an important part of travel. Certainly was for me as an individual growing up, some of my best experiences understanding different countries, cultures and areas was with family, and I think we wanted to provide a great setting with amenities, level of comfort, safety and access for families to be able to bring their kids still have access to some of those adult things and still have the, let’s say, the technology access where a dad or mom had to take some zoom calls, the other spouse could take the kids out into the pool or the lake, or go hiking while they were still able to get work done, or work from home or work remote scenario. So, we’re really trying to cater to a few different core groups, but family is just such an important unit and important part of that.

Robin Trimingham: So, this is very much what the hotel industry calls a bleisure business model, where you have blended travel. From an ownership perspective, what about your business model makes you unique and really differentiates you from what you would call a competitor?

Keir Weimer: Do you want me to answer that from the ownership standpoint? Like if you were a potential investor or from a guest standpoint, if you were choosing which hotel to stay at.

Robin Trimingham: How about both?

Keir Weimer: Okay. So first would be we’re really good at finding and acquiring properties at a really good basis and managing patients to deliver great products and experiences at what we call a really good investment basis, and then we have a great operating model that allows us to significantly drive revenue growth through both ADR and occupancy, while providing a much enhanced and improved guest experience, as evidenced by our reviews and guest feedback on the various surveys. So, I think from where could you invest or how could you get risk adjusted return in the real estate space. I think right now our what we call I would say we’re that select service upper mid-scale is where we play, but independent brand small boutique. We’re offering a really good alternative to some of the other sectors in real estate right now that are having a tough time office, which is toxic, multifamily, having a lot of challenging and higher interest rate environment, retail also having some challenges in certain areas, logistics and self-storage doing really well for obvious reasons. We’ve become this economy based and driven on e-commerce and also on just hoarding all the stuff that we buy on e-commerce. So those two areas, I think we’ll continue to do well as Americans continue to purchase and be a strong consumer. But I think hospitality is starting to rise up in the eyes of investors as well. Maybe a forgotten class that we thought we could just write off because of Covid, when actually there were some bright spots during the pandemic where certain parts of hospitality, mainly travel, leisure and that destination leisure, did really well and are actually projected to grow at the highest rate of most any other area of hospitality, and frankly, a lot of other areas of the real estate sector as a whole. So I think we’re in a really good place to be able to drive growth and returns for investors as well as for lenders. So that’s how it answered on that side. And then do you have any questions on that, Robin? Before I answer on the guest side.

Robin Trimingham: I think I would add something to that because I get to talk to a little bit of everybody all around the world. And one of the things that has been common across North America in particular, and also Europe, is there’s been practically no new construction in hotels because of the state of the capital markets. And borrowing is just so high. It’s basically a non-starter, particularly in urban areas. And yet you’re different because you are in expansion mode. So that’s quite intriguing actually.

Keir Weimer: Yeah, that’s a good point. And that’s why I also think our investment thesis and operating model is also a bit more conservative, safe and risk-adjusted because we’re not doing ground-up projects. We’re acquiring properties that are already generating revenue, that are already profitable, but they’re often under renovated, under managed, don’t have the technology, the rev management, the marketing or the brand to really power growth. And it’s usually an older family or couple. Kids have moved away different careers, don’t want to take it over. That’s the type of property that needs our vision and needs our capital and needs our investment to really take it to its full potential in the next level. So that’s what we do.

Robin Trimingham: Established in 2002, FOH is a woman-owned global food service and hospitality company that manufactures smart, savvy commercial-grade products including plateware, drinkware, flatware, hotel amenities and more. Driven by innovation, FOH is dedicated to delivering that wow experience. The restaurants and hotels crave, all while maintaining a competitive price. All products are fully customizable, and many are also created using sustainable, eco-friendly materials such as straws and plates made from biodegradable paper and wood, and PVC free drinkware. FOH has two established brands: Front of the House, focused on tabletop and buffet solutions, and Room 360, which offers hotel products. Check out their collections today at fohworldwide.com.

Robin Trimingham: You’re making me want to ask a question about staffing and leadership. What’s the operating layer under this? Are you hiring new talent? Are you maintaining people who’ve been operating the properties? How is this working for you?

Keir Weimer: Yeah. Good question. We definitely were not without challenge, like most people were in Covid with the labor markets and the wage markets and the inflation that has since settled a bit and normalized not fully back to where it once was, but it’s certainly settled. So it’s allowed us to be a little bit more effective and a little bit more flexible on building our leadership teams and being able to invest in our people with a really awesome competitive benefit package, really competitive pay, and able to do that across the company, which a lot of hospitality companies don’t do and a lot of startups can’t do, especially even offering a lot of our benefits to even elderly folks, not just salaried. So that’s been great. I would say a lot of our properties being in rural destination markets, the labor market is always challenging, mainly from a workforce housing standpoint or a lack thereof. It’s really hard for affordable housing across this country and these loser resort markets. That’s been a challenge, one that we’re continually addressing by bringing housing back to the property. So by that, we might have 30, 40 rooms and we might take 2 or 3 offline and create bunk rooms for J-1 students and or for local workers that maybe live too far or need a place to stay short term until they find an apartment.

Keir Weimer: So that flexibility has really helped us. And then also we have an unwritten standard, if you will, or policy, where we really try to have pretty much all of our general managers live on property in a renovated apartment or house or cabin on the property of the hotel. And what that does is provide a great level of service, emergency management, safety for the guests, a level of service, and a level of response where if something goes wrong or something is needed, there is always somebody there. Even if we don’t employ a 12-hour-a-day front desk, which we don’t, because we also employ a relatively lean and flexible model, more of an independent checking model where you can come in at any hour of the day. You don’t have to see anybody. You get your unique code, texted an email to you, Wi-Fi locks, and you can just check right in and check right out. You can do it all by the comfort of your phone or an app, or if you need help or want to see somebody, you can do that too.

Robin Trimingham: So, it’s a hybrid between a select service hotel and an Airbnb a little bit.

Keir Weimer: Right, it is a little on some of the elements of how we operate. Yep.

Robin Trimingham: That’s interesting. So in reality, there’s a difference between the marketing strategy and the traveler profile of the people who ultimately start booking accommodation. How are things playing out for you? I know you started very focused on the ‘Let’s have more family time together’. What’s your demographic mix? Is it so much leisure, family, so much corporate? How’s it looking?

Keir Weimer: Yeah, it’s hardly any corporate outside of some off-site business. But the business traveler segment is pretty small with us. It’s mostly going to be more Millennial single and couples, 23-24 to 38-40. It’s a big, large outside sure is the family. And then there’s a decent amount of older senior that I would say over 65 that love our properties in our brand and stay with us on a repeat basis. So that’s been great. So again, no real small proportion would say of corporate business or transit, a little bit of transient like short booking window kind of pickup last minute. But a lot of it is around where a leisure destination company and brand, right? We’re helping people reconnect to these activities, these spaces, these outdoor activities in nature in a way that is a bit unique and a bit nostalgic, too. It’s bringing back that idea of an outside exterior access cabin, County Motor Motel, and making it cool again, making it what it once was in the 70s.

Robin Trimingham: If you are actually attracting Millennials and baby boomers to the same property in the same season, then you really are on to something, because there’s definitely a split emerging in the marketplace between what Gen Z and millennials are seeking and what the baby boomer is seeking. And if you’re straddling that boundary, that is unique. So I’m a little confused when I look at your website because I find it’s very beautiful and very intriguing. I think a lot of people would like staying at your property, but on the one hand, you seem to be promoting the time to unplug, to reconnect with nature. And yet you have Alexa. I don’t want to be unfair, are we at a place where we haven’t quite figured out what we’re going to be when we grow up, or are we really trying to go down both paths permanently at the same time?

Keir Weimer: Yeah, no. That’s a good observation. And how I would answer that is we’re not trying to be everything to everyone, but we are trying to. Be appealing to a lot of people that may or may not even realize what they’re looking for when they book something, but they may know that they want something a little bit different, right? A little bit unorthodox, a little bit unconventional. Maybe not just use their reward points on Bonvoy, right, or Hilton. With that, there does come a level of expectation of what a modern traveler and consumer, even if you are adventuring outside of a brand that you may be accustomed to, trying a new independent boutique brand, or a new area and experience, there’s certain expectations of things that these travelers still would want to make sure they have. So for us, what we’re trying to do is incorporate the use of technology in a way that’s supportive and allows a level of comfort and familiarity to transition from a home into a place where they can recreate, but also work remote if they wanted. But it’s not like in their face. So, they have the amenities in their room: lightning, fast Wi-Fi, great streaming app, smart TVs, all pre-loaded free apps, Disney, Hulu, everything for the kids and themselves. Also apps on really leaning into the health and wellness space. So, in-room yoga, meditation, other things to plan their hikes, they curate their actual trip in the area, which we can talk about later with a program we launched for the Weekender experiences.

Keir Weimer: However, I don’t want it to be front and center, right? I don’t want it to be like you come in and you’re greeted by this like hologram necessarily, because we are, at the end of the day, trying to connect people to the great outdoors, to activities and great things and that always sorry, that doesn’t always mean being on your phone or on your computer and on devices. So I get that seems like a bit of a juxtaposition or even a dichotomy of sorts. But I will say we’re as a brand we’re not trying to be a getaway, if you’re familiar with that. We’re not trying to be a brand where you literally get away with no Wi-Fi at all. You’re in the woods, in a cabin, and you don’t have the modern amenities that you expect at home. That’s not our brand value. It’s not what we stand for. It’s not what we’re about or trying to do. But I can see we’re trying to straddle a little bit of both, but we’re not planning our flag, so to speak, on the ‘come to the great outdoors, you’re not going to speak to anybody in society, civilization or any kind of device for the whole time you’re here’.

Robin Trimingham: Okay, that’s fair enough. Talk to me a little bit about sustainability because these properties, if I understand correctly, are in the wilderness or on the doorstep of the wilderness and environmental awareness and hotels are on a collision course at the moment.

Keir Weimer: Yes. For me personally, the environment is it’s just so important. Nature is so important for us to protect. If we are in a position of leadership or even if we’re not, right? and every little bit counts from the products we eat and buy to our choices at the store to the choices about where we book. So, for us as a company, it’s definitely a continuum and a process. We’re not where we want to be, like most companies, but what we’re trying to do is create a five and ten-year plan where we can really start to become and get to that place where we’re almost, if not entirely, carbon neutral, and doing that through the products we source, the energy that we create and use, and then trying to create offsets with either carbon offsets, donations or charitable contributions and ways in which we can’t fully reduce footprint. But I will say it’s such a big value and part of our ethos, but it is a process because for any business, as you probably know, a lot of the technology and the ability, especially in the energy side, is not fully there. It’s getting there. We’re making great improvements, but it can become very cost-prohibitive, especially for a young company to do some of this stuff. So we’re trying to balance the reality of being a startup and expense-minded with the reality of really wanting to do our best to be a steward and a protector of the environment. I can say we’re choosing more deliberately what brands we partner with. And also, we bought 500 acres of land in the Adirondack Park. That is going to be a really cool project for us that I think can be a little bit of a conservation wilderness play and maybe potentially even be an offset carbon play for our existing hotels. So we’re working through some of the details of that right now.

Robin Trimingham: That’s an interesting approach. So when you’re specializing in developing a brand that you’re literally calling The Weekender, I think some of our hotel listeners are going to wonder, okay, what do you do during the middle of the week? What do you do in the off-season? How do you keep revenue and guests flowing through the door?

Keir Weimer: Good question. We’ve gotten that feedback from a few people, so you’re not the first. And I totally get it. On its face, just a little bit of history on the kind of the derivation of the word ‘weekender’. It has more of a fashion background and connotation in the English language. And a weekender bag, small bag, right? Canvas, leather, what have you, throw your stuff in and head off to the Hamptons or the mountains or the beach or whatever, short trip, short jaunt. For us though, I really like the word in a travel sense and an adventure sense, because for me it represents the emotion, the excitement and the energy of the weekend and of our past. Who you could literally survey 100 people, and I bet you might get one person that doesn’t have positive connotations and memories and emotion regarding the weekend, because it’s what we literally look forward to. It’s the time we get. To escape an adventure and go create amazing memories with family and friends and those we love. So for us, while it might symbolize 2/7 of the week or the short portion of the week, for us it actually embodies an ideal of how we can bring that back to make every day, every decision and truly a way of life and a lifestyle be about how we enjoy life on the weekend. And that was really the driving force behind this. Inspiring the next generation of travelers through adventure and through bringing the weekend back to the center of our lives.

Robin Trimingham: You know, it’s interesting you should say that. I was chatting with another guest just the other day and a similar concept came up. There’s definitely a point in your life when you step through a door, if you’re lucky, and your work becomes about learning and sharing and inspiring and it no longer feels like work, but it’s a hard place to get to. I’m going to say, in the first part of your career, when it’s all about being in acquisition mode -get the car, get the house, get the family, get-. So I think you really are on to something here. We’ve only got a couple of minutes left. My favorite question I ask just about all of my guests. What would be your key message to anybody who comes across this broadcast?

Keir Weimer: For me and for us and what we’re trying to build here, it’s really about and again, coming back to these themes, Robin, of almost revisiting childhood in a way that can inform how we live today as adults, if that makes sense. Meaning, I think a lot of us to touch on what you just shared get so focused on the external things that we think we need to be doing, the rat race of life, climbing the corporate ladder, keeping up with the Joneses, spend. Then we lose track of what it actually means to feel alive and to be alive and to live a fulfilling life. And for us, that doesn’t involve any of that stuff I just said. That simply involves doing fun stuff, creating epic memories with the people that you love and care about and doing it, and inspiring locations outdoors in this beautiful world that we have at our fingertips. That’s what we’ve lost sight of, and that’s what COVID reset into the core focus of our conscience, and allowed us to realize what’s truly important in life. And our goal and part of our mission is to make sure we don’t forget that going up.

Robin Trimingham: That’s a very inspiring mission, and I wish you all the best with that. You’ve been watching The Innovative Hotelier join us again soon for more up-to-the-minute insights and information specifically for the hotel and hospitality industry. You’ve been listening to The Innovative Hotelier podcast by HOTELS magazine. Join us again soon for more conversations with hospitality industry thought leaders.