Carlos Flores’ career in hospitality has certainly come full circle. One of his first jobs coming out of San Francisco State University was for hotelier Chip Conley’s first property, the Phoenix Hotel in San Francisco, where he started working on the F&B side—eventually heading up the entire beverage operation for the hotel’s Miss Pearl’s Jam House along with a few of Conley’s other outlets in the city as his Joie de Vivre Hotels empire expanded. Then the dot com boom happened, “and you couldn’t help but be sucked into the vortex,” says Flores, whose business training and personal interests lured him away from hospitality. He went on to hold senior management positions in the tech, media, and retail industries before landing at real estate management and investment company Reit Management & Research (RMR) six years ago. Originally brought on board to run the IT organization of the rapidly growing company, Flores soon started working in other capacities. “Real estate technology brought me in, bringing me closer to hospitality again.”
In early 2012, Hospitality Properties Trust (HPT), a division of RMR, acquired the three hotels in the domestic portfolio of Sonesta International Hotels Corporation, a company with a history stretching back to the late-1930s. HPT converted some of its existing portfolio to Sonesta management, acquiring more along the way specifically for the company. Now, under five brands, Sonesta manages 35 U.S. hotels, 27 more across the globe, and five cruise ships that traverse the Nile River. Flores came on as executive vice president (heading up sales and marketing as well as a host of other responsibilities), working closely with then-president and CEO Bill Sheehan. The growth strategy “was like doing airline maintenance in flight,” Flores says. “We had an operation to run, but at the same time we were rebuilding engines.”
The lobby design concept for ES Suites, highlighted by pops of navy blue and
yellow, shown here in Andover, Massachusetts. Photography courtesy of
the Sonesta Collection.
The objective was to convert 21 hotels in locations from Miami to Baltimore, Atlanta, and Philadelphia to Sonestas “as fast as humanly possible,” Flores explains, all while building a platform for sustained growth, reconceiving the management company, and launching an entirely new brand. And upon Sheehan’s retirement in January, Flores was named president and CEO, a role that offers “a certain amount of agility,” he says. “I know exactly which direction I want to go, and I’m the one making those decisions.”
Renovations started with the Sims Patrick Studio-led redesign of the Sonesta Resort Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, a property that exemplifies the company’s design approach: contemporary leaning (without being cold) with an authentic sense of place. “We’re looking at trying to attract and include the local culture and environment,” Flores says. It’s an important aspect in the company’s selection of firms to work with, partnering with those that may either have a tie to the area or capabilities in line with what Sonesta wants to create for a particular location. “Whoever our partner is has good technical skills but also a good methodology behind how we intend to go through the process,” says Flores, who asks questions like, “‘Have we found a locally inspired design? Is there a way to make it better? Have we put together a plan that’s going to put this hotel in the best position to respond to the actual needs of the market?’ Something hyper-local that nobody wants isn’t going to do us any good.”
The Ambassador suite at the Royal Sonesta Harbor Court in Baltimore,
redesigned by Parker-Torres, offers views of the city’s Inner Harbor.
Marketplace demands are also what led to a new brand: extended stay offering ES Suites, which officially launched in May with 16 properties, expanding its footprint by nine more in July (in places such as Tucson, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis, and Princeton and Somerset, New Jersey). Conversions of various former extended stay hotels, the suites incorporate a design conceived in partnership with Sudbury, Massachusetts-based Parker-Torres Design, that “ports well,” Flores says. Bright is the operative word. “I’m always amazed at how little light people allow into these spaces,” he adds.
A hanging installation of sea glass, shells, and driftwood is the focal point of the
revamped, six-story atrium lobby at the Sonesta Resort Hilton Head Island.
The studio, one-, and two-bedroom suites feature a neutral palette accented with rich honey-toned wood, according to Parker-Torres associate principal Ellen Bourque Johnson. And in public spaces—complete with the Pour concept, which morphs from a coffee and smoothie bar by day to a cocktail bar in the evening—“pops of navy blue and fresh yellow infuse a playful casualness,” she says.
Also debuted in July, the brand’s first new build, the Sonesta Bee Cave Austin, located adjacent to a mixed-used development that includes a 1.5-million-square-foot lifestyle mall. Completed by Gensler, “every component, even the façade” of the 195-room property (which includes hill country-inspired rooftop lounge Meridian 98) “is reflective of the raw materials you might find in the area,” Flores says. “Even the art that’s hung on the walls is evocative of what’s going on in the hip Austin market.” Still to come is the completion of the last of the conversions, the Royal Sonesta New Orleans, due to open in November with a new look by Parker-Torres.
Wood and blue hues dominate in the Sonesta Bee Cave Austin’s lobby, while
a honeycomb-esque wall art piece backs the reception desk.
Particularly for its full-service hotels, Sonesta is always on the lookout for opportunities in major cities where it doesn’t have a presence, such as New York and Chicago. At the same time, opportunistic acquisitions are “really where we’ll see a lot of growth—not just where we are in this cycle, but probably forever,” Flores says. “It’s a good way to do business.”
