B.R. Guest & Starwood Capital Open the Post Card Inn on the Beach

Andrew Calvo | November 19, 2009 | 0 Comments

So its been a few days and a lot more information has come out about the “new hotel brand” that Barry Sternlicht mentioned during his interview with Maria Bartiromo the other day.

Post Card Inn on the Beach is a unique hotel located in St. Pete’s Beach, FL (not St. Petersburg) in what used to be an old TravelLodge. Starwood Capital had purchased the property a number of years ago to build a high end luxury hotel (1 Hotel?) but the town wouldn’t approve it mainly due to the building height they were asking to build.

Since then, Steve Hanson, the President of B.R. Guest Restaurants suggested to Barry Sternlicht to open a smaller hotel on the property – utilizing the existing building, and doing a major cosmetic renovation. The result is the Post Card Inn at the Beach, featuring a WildWood BBQ & Grill Restaurant (the second WWBG in the B.R. Guest Empire) and a hotel which has a very laid back, beach theme – with a price point at about $149 a night. It’s not Super 8 prices – but its not Westin/Hilton at destination location prices either.

Even though B.R. Guest is owned by Starwood Capital – Post Card Inn is mainly a B.R. Guest operation. Steve Hanson created The James hotel in Scottsdale, AZ in 2004, and begun work on its sister property The James Hotel in Chicago. He’s no longer affiliated with The James – of which the Scottsdale one was purchased by Morgans Hotel Group and has been converted into the Mondarian Scottsdale.

Where the Post Card Inn will go from here isn’t really known; Sternlicht inferred in his interview that the Post Card Inn will be a brand, and the press release has inferred that as well. I’m just not sure that you can really replicate a hotel like this (surfing-type) easily in multiple locations – especially within the United States where the ocean can’t be reached for hours. Then again – a brand doesn’t have to mean hundreds of hotels – it could be simply a few locations in towns by the beach up and down the East and West Coast.

With someone like Barry Sternlicht and Starwood Capital involved behind the scenes – crazier things have happened..

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