tl;dr – This brand is starting to feel a little Graduate-esque.
Sports Illustrated Resorts has just announced its newest future location – Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Home to Louisiana State University (LSU), this is the brand’s third announced property in a city home to an SEC school. The brand’s first location will debut in Chicago, and previously announced locations include Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee.
And there’s a decent indicator of success in this ‘university’ driven model.
Evidently, Hilton’s Graduate Hotels – Hilton’s college town-focused brand – is doing pretty well. So much so that Hilton is launching an offshoot of the brand targeting even more niche college towns.
As Sports Illustrated is itself a brand name, the focus, at least on these first few properties, has been a bit more ‘grandiose’ when compared to Graduate Hotels. Even this Baton Rouge property – a conversion of a 291-key flagship Hilton hotel overlooking the Mississippi River – suggests that the project will be a bit showier. Reportedly, Shaq (LSU alum) is an investor.
Travel + Leisure Co. has the rights to the Sports Illustrated Resorts brand, and it plans to scale it to many more destinations. By the way, if you’re wondering if this is the same ‘Travel + Leisure’ as the famed magazine, the answer is ‘Yes, but.’ The company that operates these hotels has licensed the Travel + Leisure brand from the company that operates the magazine. Essentially, its a hotelier/real-estate company that has license several brands (another one is Eddie Bauer) to bring some name-recognition and to help market its properties.
Though it’s early, I could totally see another major player – Marriott comes to mind – making a move for this Sports Illustrated brand as a way to compete with Hilton’s Graduate Brand. There’s intrigue in that a would-be acquirer would be, again, getting a known-name – even if people don’t readily associate Sports Illustrated with hotels. I’m sure the folks at Travel + Leisure Co. have no shortage of resources for running Sports Illustrated Resorts well, but with the right real estate, franchising, development, marketing and distribution behind it, I could see this brand becoming enticing bait for some chain hoping to build the ‘go-to’ hotel brand for traveling sports fans.
