Longtime Rockbridge CEO Jim Merkel recently spoke about how the company he co-founded in 1999 has evolved over the decades. As such, he reflected on his very earliest professional experience—working for a hotel owner and operator fresh out of college—and how it provided a valuable operations and development background that has, over the years, informed investment decisions involving some 430 hotels around the country in 45 states.
What he considers to be the biggest change he has witnessed in his professional career—the ability to build a customer base using data from guests—has led to the company’s growing commitment to the independent lifestyle segment. That ability, he pointed out, has laid the groundwork for Makeready, the independent leisure brand whose Junto property in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, is scheduled to open on Memorial Day. Merkel became intrigued some 10 years ago by the growing demand for lifestyle hotels among travelers seeking something beyond the predictable experience provided by cookie-cutter properties. “We knew the uniqueness of operating an independent hotel, and we wanted to do it really well and do it at a very high level,” he noted.
With the capital resources to “do it right” and an experienced operator, Christine Magrann, on board, they conceived Makeready “to execute on the vision of building an independent lifestyle hotel brand from scratch.” They even created their own development and construction management arm, RB Hotel Development (RBHD), “so we could build and develop the hotels we wanted to operate from a renovation and physical product standpoint.” According to Merkel, another significant advantage in being able to develop those hotels is the ability to engage with guests in a way that wasn’t possible 20 years ago.
“There is now the ability for a hotel or a restaurant to build their own customer base because of the access that we now have to information. With social media and review sites, the guest has a bigger voice than ever before. We can read their reviews,” he said.
Merkel elaborated on the result of that feedback.
“We’ve grown a portfolio of 12 hotels that all are cohesive and consistent with the Makeready brand,” he said.
Merkel further noted that their choice of locations for the properties is guided by “the vision of creating connective places and destinations that make a difference within the communities we join.”
Those locations include the Adolphus in downtown Dallas, Texas, and Noelle, a Nashville, Tennessee hotel built in the 1920s.
Although they vary greatly from one property to the next, what Makeready hotels have in common is what Merkel calls “positive energy environments,” with a strong focus on food & beverage.
“The truth is, we have built Makeready from the ground up. Although the hotels themselves may be ground up or adaptive reuse, with deep renovation, we’re very deliberate and selective about the properties and projects that we do. The brand is that you build a relationship with the customer and they come to expect what you deliver. And if you choose to do a project that doesn’t meet that standard, it erodes the value of the brand,” concluded Merkel.
