Skift Take
If you like to walk through the hotel lobby in your Hawaiian shirt and swim trunks, you might will feel self-conscious at The Ritz-Carlton. But maybe not at a Tommy Bahama property.
The retailer Tommy Bahama is best known for its Hawaiian shirts and board shorts. But the yacht-owning multi-millionaires who like the brand's easy breezy clothes have wanted a similarly ultra-chill hotel to slip into.
That's the premise behind Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa, the first hotel from the retailer — which opened last month. Tommy Bahama's headquarters may be in drizzly Seattle, but its heart is in warm-weather spots like Indian Wells, California, where the 215-room hotel is.
"We did about 10 focus groups all over the country, and at the end of each, I'd ask 'What would you like us to do?' and they'd say 'Create a resort,'" said Doug Wood, CEO of Tommy Bahama. "And I would think to myself, 'That sounds so hard.'"
To get help, Wood's team joined with Lowe, an LA-based real-estate services firm. Lowe had bought the Miramonte, a down-on-its-luck resort in the Coachella Valley, out of foreclosure. Tommy Bahama’s parent company, Oxford Industrie