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New Southern Living Hotel Collection aims for 100 properties
In its first month in the hotel business, Time Life’s Southern Living magazine is in talks to grow its portfolio of upscale, privately owned Dixieland properties by more than 25%.
The Southern Living Hotel Collection, launched this month with 15 properties, already has four more in the works, including two scheduled to open in August and September.
The plan is to eventually have 100 four- and five-star independent hotels, hand-picked by Southern Living staff for their "great food, great architecture and interiors, and unexpected experiences of the South," Kristen Payne, executive director of new business development, told TravelMole.
The 15 charter members are concentrated in Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas, though that will broaden as more are added.
Room rates start at $150, but most run higher than that. Many offer unique meeting spaces and activities.
The board rooms at the Inn at Palmetto Bluff, for example, offer unforgettable vistas, and "no event planner could go wrong bringing the decision makers on an antique-yacht cruise along the May River at Palmetto Bluff or a little team-building over skeet shooting and more at Big Cedar Lodge, Pursell Farms or Barnsley Gardens Resort," Payne says. "Every property has something to offer."
In any event, "We guarantee you will not sit in a windowless conference room eating lukewarm chicken."
The move into hospitality "wasn’t much of a stretch for us," she notes. The magazine has four core pillars—home, garden, travel and food—and already licenses products in the first two.
The Hotel Collection now allows it to scout out properties that offer both amazing travel experiences and great food.
Southern Living offers a Hotel Collection website that collects reservation information but then sends it to the hotels. A booking engine, "a system like Sabre," is in the works, Payne says.
By Cheryl Rosen
Cheryl
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