Bringing Vision and Community Together to Provide a One of a Kind Experience

The Luxurious Horton Boutique Hotel Interview

Bringing Vision and Community Together to Provide a One of a Kind Experience
The Luxurious Horton Boutique Hotel Interview

By Nathan Gawlik

Nathan Gawlik's experience includes being a General Manager of a Hampton Inn and other front line roles such as a Banquet Captain, Front Desk Agent, Housekeeper, Catering Event Manager, and Director of Sales.

Boone, North Carolina is situated in the highlands of the Blue Ridge Mountains surrounded by several ski destinations within minutes of downtown. The college town hosts Appalachian State University, a prominent staple of the small community of less than 20,000 people.

Boone has a rich history dating back to the homestead life in the 1700s; the town gets its namesake from American folklore frontier hero Daniel Boone. Nearby, Hickory Ridge Living History Museum features live reenactments of simpler times and life on the frontier. By the early 1900s, Boone had become a popular destination for people to escape the heat of lower coastal areas in North Carolina.

Interestingly enough, it wasn't until Fulton Lovin, owner of the Horton Hotel, came along that the downtown had an upscale boutique hotel. No other accommodation options are within walking distance of the downtown shops and restaurants nor as close to the university as the Horton Hotel.

About the Property

Denise and Fulton Lovin are owners of the 15-room boutique hotel and rooftop bar in downtown Boone, North Carolina.

They set out with a dream to reimagine the building where their hotel now resides. Formally a department store, Studebaker car mechanic shop and many other things, the Lovin family knew they wanted to preserve that history but deliver a unique luxurious experience for their guests.

"We held from the beginning," Denise Lovin states, "that we wanted to create an iconic business in the middle of our downtown that would go on in history... and continue the story of downtown Boone." She wanted her guests to share in their enthusiasm and excitement for the renovation.

The Horton Hotel opened in February of 2019, under the leadership of Andrea Morton who heads the day-to-day operations. Morton helps guide team members with their Horton principles they have come to recognize below:

Hospitality
Originality
Respect
Team work
Ownership
Neighborly

One of the unique aspects of the Horton hotel is how they have taken their principles and involved the local community of Boone to provide a truly unique experience.

Denise Lovin and Andrea Morton joined me in April of 2021 for this interview.

Andrea, Can you give me a little bit of background on the town of Boone and then the Horton family?

Our building in particular was originally a Studebaker car garage and didn't look anything like it currently does now. People used to drive their Studebakers right in through the front of the building to be worked on.

Actually, when they were excavating the building's elevator, workers found old Studebaker car parts in the walls, floor and foundation. So they pulled those out and put them on the wall to showcase that history.

After Walter Horton and his family settled here, Horton came upon this building and felt like it would make a great department store.

So he built it into the storefront that still exists today (we still have his beautiful windows at the front entry of the hotel). He also inscribed his name in the building. Funnily enough, he got up and going but then went bankrupt.

The building continued being a store called Spainhour's for a while. It became a bunch of other things, like apartments and a fraternity house. Just before we took it over, it became an art gallery retail space.

How did you get into the industry, Denise?

My husband Fulton was very familiar with real estate and buildings that were for sale, and he's a dreamer and creator. He knew this building was for sale for a number of years. He would toy in his mind what would be the best use for this building.

He had realized that having a hotel and rooftop bar downtown was something that was missing. The hotel would have a beautiful view because we're in a mountainous, rural rustic area. He had the vision to convert the space into a 15-room boutique hotel with a lobby lounge and a rooftop lounge.

He asked if, in my retirement, I wanted to go into that business, which I wasn't familiar with. I'm always up for a project and a challenge. I thought that could be an interesting change for us to bring this business into our downtown. We're here to stay in North Carolina, so I really thought that it could be a great contribution to the town.

In fact, the town was very excited about the idea of having a hotel as well as a rooftop lounge; they were supportive of us developing it. The missing piece is that neither of us has hospitality know-how, so that's where we were lucky to find Andrea, who is now our Director of Operations and has been since the beginning.

Andrea, can you tell me a little bit about the early days of the property?

The renovation took about two years. In that time frame, the owners, Denise and Fulton, were not sitting idle. She was jumping full steam ahead into getting the social media up and going, getting people excited about the brand, getting the brand awareness going before we even were open.

By the time we opened the doors, people were really excited to come to a really great place. Fulton was really an integral part of the design and the building.

I'm from Savannah, Georgia. My family owned a bed and breakfast in historic Savannah for almost 20 years. I helped them run that for many years, then my family sold it, and I stayed on for new ownership and taught them what to do. Then they quickly sold it, and I stayed on for the third set of owners and showed them what to do and stayed on for them.

Meanwhile, I was growing a wedding business in Savannah. We were doing small, intimate weddings and elopements. We got the idea to bring that up to the high country. So we moved to the mountains and started a wedding business here. It was actually my husband that introduced me to Fulton who needed somebody to help them run the hotel, and that's how I landed here.

Andrea, Can you elaborate on your experience in running a bed and breakfast and how it helped with the Horton Boutique Hotel project?

What I brought to the property was my knowledge of running a small bed and breakfast in a tourist town. We served breakfast at that property, so there were a lot of things that were similar.

However, there are a lot of things that were new as this property is what we consider a boutique hotel. We're careful not to call it a bed and breakfast or an inn because we do offer a more upscale hotel experience.

Starting a hotel from scratch meant that everything had to be thought about. Everything had to be purchased; we had to fill the rooms with: bedding, amenities, glassware, plates, foods, drinks, products...all of it.

So I was an integral part of helping them pick and choose all those items, and we use the community and our social media fans to help us formulate our choices, too. They got to be a part of those ideas. We opened the decision making process up to them, which created a lot of interest and engagement in our project.

Denise, how did you set out to execute on the vision for the Horton Hotel, and what has contributed to your success?

By putting something together that had our authenticity and uniqueness, we made our hotel an experience that's very intimate and personal. The Horton Hotel is different from anything else that you'll find in our town. Many people will come in here often in awe that we are a change from what they're used to in downtown Boone.

The only part of the dream that we held from the very beginning was creating a place that could be iconic, creating a business in the middle of our downtown that would go on in history, having a meeting place and a gathering place where people would be comfortable and excited to come to and be enthusiastic about, and certainly wanted to bring something different to the table and different to our downtown then had been here before, but at the same time, hold it in history.

In terms of our spaces, we have a lot of integration with the history of the building, the history of our town and the history of the Horton family. So we kept it grounded in the past but really wanted to create something that would move into the future and continue the story of downtown Boone.

That was our dream from the beginning: to make something really, really special that people would be excited about. I feel good about getting there.

To that point, why did you make the decision to offer an eclectic variety of amenities to your guests?

We have the white noise machines, robes, and aromatherapy in each of our guest rooms, in addition to the standard amenities you might expect from a hotel. We also offer cannabidiol-infused teas and gummies and an assortment of different wines and other alcoholic beverages and package options.

We wanted to offer things that were special and unique that you might not find in your run-of-the-mill hotel. We are always trying to pay attention to what is trendy and what people seem to be striving to buy or try. That's our goal: to make this stay so much more than just a head in a bed.

We like to play on your senses: Your sense of smell, touch and sight all play a part in the experience.

I'll give you an example. Because we operate in an older, renovated building, some of our rooms are windowless. We asked ourselves how we can make somebody stay extra cozy in a room that doesn't have windows and doesn't have natural light.

So we set our TVs up to have a live feed of our rooftop bar.

We also felt a desire to bring in some salt lamps into those windowless rooms to make it a little bit more warm and soothing in there - not to mention there are potential health benefits the lamps provide. I also think our essential oils program and the diffusers available in our rooms are another way of providing someone a holistic experience of comfort.

Denise, I would imagine people that have been cooped up over the last several months would love to visit your property to relax. How has COVID-19 affected your property?

We had to lay everyone off, so it's just been Andrea, myself and my husband Fulton. We did what we could to just continue to think about the business and put out social media messaging that promoted hope and encouraged positivity. We also focused on some things within the business that we could change. We use that period of time to do some things that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, during the hustle and bustle of a business.

I think what has been really positive is that our hotel offers a great setting for somebody who might be reluctant to travel during or after the pandemic, because one we're located in a rural community.

We have the outdoors as a fantastic amenity that draws people to our area. Then our property has the rooftop lounge, which has 360 degree views and then finally the intimacy of our spaces, I think also promotes safety.

We of course integrated an enhanced cleaning process. Andrea and I developed the Clean Plus Promise, which was built on what was already deep sanitation and disinfection of our rooms but took that as an opportunity as a way to assure people that their experience here was going to be safe.

Andrea, Why are your guests coming to stay with you? Why are they coming to Boone, NC?

Being from Savannah, which is an international destination, I was not familiar with how localized and regional our demographic was going to be. The majority of our visitors are North Carolinians. They're coming from Raleigh, Winston, Charlotte, Chapel Hill and Wilmington even. Many are Appalachian State Alumni. They're mostly in their 40s to 60s, though, some are their 30s.

A lot of them are stuck at home here, so many of them like to do staycations at our hotel. There's nothing like this in Boone. We find that people are wanting to give us a try because they didn't realize they could have an upscale experience like this.

What's so exciting is we haven't been on third party sites to date. I felt so confident about not joining an online travel agency and just riding this wave of our niche market, that I suggested we test the waters and see how long we can ride this wave.

Have you heard of the loyalty points program for boutique hotels called Stash?

Yeah, we are partnered with Stash. They are a great community composed of higher end inns, boutique hotels and other smaller properties like ours. You can earn points and free nights. We do have so many returning visitors; people just want to get away for a night.

Are you happy with Stash Rewards?

Yeah my favorite part about it is that we're going to see the returning guests 2, 3, 4 times a year, if not more.They're so excited about the fact that they can earn free nights, and offering them that is a low cost for us.

Do you have other strategies that have worked to help fill rooms?

Initially when we opened, I was hell bent on having night minimums on the weekends because that's how I operated in Savannah. We would list those two night minimums should we not be selling, but then I kept realizing that people were visiting us from Charlotte and Winston and just wanted to get away for one night.

So we got rid of that tonight minimum, except during really high seasons like October when there's so many festivals, football games and other fall activities going on. We were able to fill more rooms by allowing one night stays; of course, that's tougher on the staff and the turnaround, but it's been really well received and is a great way to fill occupancy.

What are your other marketing efforts? What else are you doing to promote your property?

Our best marketing effort comes from our social media strategy. From day one, before even opening our doors to the public, I spent a lot of time with social media strategists. We knew that this was a way for us at either no cost or low cost to generate some fan base and engagement. We met with those strategists on all the different platforms; we particularly use Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

We do regular posts and comment. I delegate to our front desk to keep that up. We've been able to generate an organic fan base.

Because of that and our small town location, we open the building process and the choices we make to the public and to the community. We want them to feel like they had a say. Then they are excited to come in to see whether or not we chose what they selected.

For instance, when we were choosing our plates and dishes, we were like, "Which one do you like better: this orange bowl or this green bowl?"

We provide an easy opportunity for them to put a stamp on it. We saw the engagement rise to hundreds of comments in just a few hours. People were just bombarding us with engagement. We haven't stopped.

People are excited to see what we're going to post. They're also now looking regularly at our social media posts. They see when we are offering specials or have new products to offer because we have so much healthy organic engagement.

We have a social media calendar, and, before the month begins, we sit down with that calendar to discuss what holidays are coming up that month or what we'd like to promote. We list it all out.

I highly recommend if someone's starting a new business or even if they're buying an existing business but changing its branding to go ahead and get the momentum of your social media fan base going as soon as possible. That way, by the time you have your doors open, your fan base will be excited and waiting for you to see what you're up to.

In addition to that, we have an email subscription. That's where a lot of our marketing money has gone. We try to send out a newsletter or special note from me between two and three times a month. That's also on our social media calendar.

Our open rate is really great at about 30%.

We are also members of our chambers, both the Blowing Rock, NC and the Boone, NC chambers, and we're always sending them on a weekly basis anything that we possibly can. We're striving for creating professional partnerships with communities like upscale neighborhoods.

We try to get on their monthly or quarterly newsletters that they send out to their residents, so that those people know we're here and what we offer.

Conclusion

Andrea and her team attribute their success to their strong core values they have incorporated into the Horton name itself. Showcased in the below acronym:

Hospitality
Originality
Respect
Team work
Ownership
Neighborly

They go back to those values on a daily basis to reference it to the staff. It is an important part of the management to create a healthy workplace. When a property has happy staff, then happy customers come naturally. The property reviews on Google or TripAdvisor almost always mention how wonderful the staff is.

The Horton is incredibly authentic. They leverage social media to help the community feel more connected to the hotel. They own their HORTON values and it shows.

It's clear that Andrea takes pride in creating such a positive culture. She said, "despite how beautiful the spaces and how wonderful our amenities are, and how much time has gone into creating space; it's the staff that make it so memorable.

MARKETING

OPERATIONS

CASE STUDIES

THEORY