ORLANDO — During Cobblestone Hotels’ annual conference this week, Brand President Josie Kilgore and President of Development Jeremy Griesbach announced that the company’s MainStreet prototype for its flagship Cobblestone brand will spin off to be its own brand next year.
From Prototype to Brand
Hotels that have opened within the prototype already have a tagline under their signage that they are MainStreet properties, Kilgore noted, and the properties have upscale elements that set them apart from other Cobblestone hotels. “We consider it more of a boutique brand,” Kilgore said, noting that the name had not yet been finalized. “We want to still have our bread and butter be the standard Cobblestone,” Kilgore said.
While Cobblestone has traditionally been comfortably in the upper-midscale category, Kilgore thinks MainStreet, as a brand, could push against the upscale boundary, “depending where in the market it falls, and … where and who is in the area.”
As for the existing Cobblestone hotels using the MainStreet prototype, Griesbach said the company’s leadership will make the transition to a new brand “as painless as we can for the operators and the owners.”
The new brand will follow the Cobblestone policy of targeting smaller markets. Griesbach said the team will look for cities and towns with a minimum population of 15,000. “But there are exceptions,” he noted.
Year Over Year
The company added eight hotels to its portfolio since last year’s conference, and signed a further three. (The team expects six more signings to be finalized by the end of the year, Griesbach said.) “[We’ll] hopefully have a new state or two to add to our 28 states that we're in, [and] then also more groundbreakings in the … South and in the Midwest.”
At the same time, the company removed about eight hotels from its portfolio, which Kilgore said was due to maintaining “brand integrity.” Griesbach agreed with the assessment. “They didn't represent the brand well anymore, and we feel like we owe that to all franchisees in here—and all the general managers—to make sure that we do everything we can to maintain that brand consistency,” he said during the general session.
Overall, Griesbach said of the past year, “we're doing pretty well.”
Extended-Stay Demand
Cobblestone’s debut Riverstone Suites extended-stay hotel—which Kilgore described as a “passion project” of late Brian Wogernese—opened shortly before last year’s conference in Chippewa Falls, Wis. Since then, the company’s leaders have been paying careful attention to the property and determining what kind of technology the brand will need to operate efficiently as it gains ground.
“Some of the markets where MainStreet's playing might also be where Riverstone is playing,” Griesbach said, noting that towns of 5,000 people probably do not need an extended-stay hotel. “But you get to a town of 50,000, we probably make sense, and our 58-room prototype still offers something smaller than most of the big guys are willing to build.”
The company is aiming to open another Riverstone property “in the next year or two,” he added, and is seeking different types of markets for the brand. As with the debut property, the Cobblestone team will own the next few Riverstone Suites properties before partnering with franchisees. “We just want to make sure that, as we've always done when we roll out a new product, we take the time to learn it before we take it and try to bring other people into the fold.”
Tech and Innovation
As the company works with its partners to determine the right tech stack for each brand in its portfolio, Kilgore emphasized that Cobblestone will not blaze trails when it comes to technology. “We're not going to be the first ones to check these out,” she said during the general session. “We kind of sit back and let some of the bigger brands spend all of the money and see if it makes sense for them, because there [are] some things that make sense for a market such as Orlando, [but that don’t] make sense for some of our small-town properties.”
Speaking to Hotel Management later, Kilgore noted that the Cobblestone team has seen any number of brands implement different types of technology that does not end up sticking.
we've seen a lot of a lot of brands implement things and then not not stick, you know, we, we, we've seen a lot, a lot of things come and go, but and a lot of brands not do things that, you know, maybe should, should have.
“We have to make sure that anytime we do something—and we do implement new technology—that there is a return on investment to the franchisees,” Griesbach told the attendees. “We're not going to do something just because it's cool.”