The hotel brand for “global creative nomads” is quietly expanding like crazy.
We expect almost everything to be personalized. Experiences, restaurants, phones. Everything individually tailored to you. Hotels are no exception to this rule, although finding the right hotel for your lifestyle has never been so difficult. There are so many options that the hotel landscape can seem overwhelming. Sites like Kayak, TripAdvisor, or Hotels.com have detailed terms and conditions, thousands of photos, and an endless stream of user reviews that are generally worthless.
Additionally, Marriott has a million brands under its roof, boutiques seem to pop up overnight, budget versions can be a hit or miss, and Airbnb is total crap.
But every now and then there is a hotel brand that knows exactly what it is, whom it appeals to and what it wants to convey. Real hospitality is one of those brands. For those who don’t know, Proper Hotels has in San Francisco (as Fodor is called one of the best hotels in the world in 2019), Santa Monica, Austin, Downtown LA, and coming to Malibu soon; Proper is aimed at the “global creative nomad of today”.
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We wanted to get a glimpse of this emerging hotel brand so we caught up with Brian De Lowe, President and Co-Founder of Proper Hospitality, to find out more about who they are, what they have up to do and what’s coming next.
The right AustinThe Ingallen
Let’s just start with the basics. How do you describe Proper Hotel’s brands?
We design, market and operate curated lifestyle hotel experiences under the Proper brand and under the Hotel June Brand. I think at Proper we are really filling a void in the market by creating hotels that are special and unique – and hopefully stand the test of time. Our goal is to create hotels that appeal to a new generation of high-end travelers who not only want upscale services and amenities, but who are looking for truly memorable stays and cultural connectivity.
It feels like design is a big part of the hotel’s ethos. How does that affect what you do?
We call our properties a looser kind of luxury borrowing from Kelly Wearstler’s design aesthetic. She is the designer of the Proper brand hotels. It’s kind of unique and eclectic and luxurious all the while mixing with these carefully curated unique experiences and programs and truly extraordinarily thoughtful food and drink offerings. And we try to do this through that socially conscious lens that cares about our environment and our neighborhoods. So Proper Hotels are really the perfect choice for high-end travelers who appreciate great design but also want to feel like they are part of the city and have the best local experience through our lens.
Austin ProperThe Ingallen
You describe your community as that creative nomad, but can you be more specific about who to turn to?
Yeah, I think we’re different from an Ace Hotel or a Standard, one of those more typical boutique lifestyle hotels where the age of the customers is between 20 and 40. I think the age of our customers is a bit older. So 30 to 50 is probably the sweet spot, but very much tailored to the creative areas, demanding on their travel and food and drink tastes, taste in design and can probably afford to stay in a more traditional luxury hotel like a Four Seasons or Ritz Carlton, but they don’t want to.
You seem to be expanding pretty quickly, what’s in store for the company?
We got into COVID after opening our two major flagships, which are located in Santa Monica and Austin. When the pandemic broke out, we kind of settled down, but I’m proud to say that we have now opened all of our hotels that we closed during the pandemic. We opened our first Hotel June in LA last summer. We opened them Venice V last month, and we’re opening two more hotels this summer or fall with another property in Downtown LA and a Hotel June in Malibu. And we’ve also signed a few more contracts. So we’re growing very fast.
Proper President and Co-Founder Brian De LoweTrevor King
Another big part of your hotels revolves around food. What do you look for when you think about your hotel restaurants?
It’s a big part of the Proper brand. We’re big consumers of food and drink ourselves, and that’s all I really think about. When I travel, dining is a big part of what brings me to travel destinations and what I focus on locally. A really fun part of my job when we open hotels in other markets is connecting with culinary partners in the local areas who are doing great things. Some hotel brands focus on the kind of really big partners that maybe have 20 or 30 other hotel restaurants with a national or international streak. But for us we really focus on the Local Hero partners who we think are very valued in the local communities but maybe the travelers are not aware of it. We can offer that to our guests and offer them something that really feels like city.
Can you tell us about the two new properties in Downtown Los Angeles and Malibu?
We’ve always loved Downtown LA, but until recently we didn’t think it was ready for a hotel like ours. We bought the building six or seven years ago and it’s a landmark of the California renaissance of the 1920s. It was originally built as a state-of-the-art private club in the 1920s and had members such as film director Cecil B. DeMille. It was built with an indoor basketball court, an indoor swimming pool and all these amazing rooms inside the building. Then it was converted into a YWCA in the 1960s and operated as a YWCA until a few years before it was purchased. We’ve reinvented it now and have these insane suites, an incredible rooftop terrace with 360-degree views, and we’ve teamed up with the legendary Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne who are at the top of the LA restaurant world.
Hotel JuneThe Ingallen
And what about the new Hotel June in Malibu?
First, let’s talk about the Hotel June brand. Basically it’s a cheaper hotel than a Proper hotel, but it still has the same kind of atmosphere, energy, style, and programming that the people at Proper love. We found that there were a lot of really great neighborhoods and great places we wanted to build a hotel in, but it wasn’t right for the Proper brand. So last year we opened our June 1st and June 2nd opened on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.
The Malibu June is located in the former Native Hotel. It was originally a motel founded by this couple, the Wilcoxs, in the 1950s. They built this motel while living in a tent in Point Dume for years, and they owned and ran it for decades. They were art lovers and a bunch of artists, musicians and writers stayed there. Bob Dylan was there when he wrote Blood on the Tracks in one of the bungalows, so we pay homage to him. Now we’re taking it from a still very basic roadside motel to the next level and we’ve raised it and upgraded the guest rooms, we’ve added a pool, and we’ve added some food and drink. Malibu is such an iconic haven for all of us in Southern California and for visitors to LA, and I think there are maybe 100 hotel rooms in all of Malibu. In addition, the price points are outrageously high. So we took the June concept, which is supposed to offer everything we think our guests are looking for, but cut down on some of the excesses that would turn this into a over $ 1,000 a night hotel and do this really cool thing with real estate for that local community and for travelers who are fresh, designed and made to feel part of the soul and spirit of Southern California for a reasonable price.
