The Huntley Hotel is wrapping up a redesign that’s meant to show how the Santa Monica property has left its Radisson days behind and is now entering the luxury sector.
The $12 million makeover will be finished as the hotel switches to a Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. franchise after it dropped its Radisson Hotels & Resorts affiliation.
“Our basic reason was just to take advantage of the potential that we have in the market,” Shiva Aghaipour, the hotel’s vice president, said of the switch. “We are looking at the affluent traveler.”
The hotel, a block from the Third Street Promenade and the beach, is banking that the affluent traveler will pay a premium for new amenities such as 42-inch plasma televisions, which have been added to its 209 rooms. In the summer, the rooms will start at $299 per night, up about $100 from last year’s summer-average daily room rate.
The hike comes as other hotels do the same in preparation for what’s expected to be a strong travel season. In March, the average price to spend a night in a Santa Monica hotel room was $215.57, an increase of nearly 5 percent from the prior year, according to PKF Consulting.
“We are getting more in line with the Viceroy, Loews and the Fairmont,” said Aghaipour. “That is my comp set.”
So far, the Huntley hasn’t had a problem filling rooms. Aghaipour, whose family owns and operates the hotel, said that the occupancy rate is hovering around 85 percent, compared with March’s Santa Monica occupancy rate of around 81 percent.
West Hollywood-based designer Thomas Schoos directed the revamp, which features a lobby wall covered with piranhas and a front desk topped with sting ray skin.
“It is different, that is what I wanted to do,” he said. “To do a nice beige, crystal-chandelier lobby is easy.”
Starbucks Water
Starbucks Corp. is known for its coffee, of course, but it sells bottled water as well and soon that water will come from Santa Monica-based Ethos Brands LLC.
Starbucks bought privately held Ethos for about $8 million in cash, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ethos Brands’ bottled water, marketed under the name Ethos Water, will replace Calistoga-based Crystal Geyser Water Co. products this summer in about 4,300 company-operated U.S. stores.
Prior to its sale, Ethos Water products were distributed to natural foods stores.
Alan Hilowitz, a spokesman for Seattle-based Starbucks, said the company generated $25 million in revenues last year from bottled water sales. That’s only a fraction of total revenues of nearly $5.3 billion for the year ended Oct. 3, 2004.
Starbucks was drawn to Ethos because of that company’s emphasis on social responsibility, according to Hilowitz. That includes pledges to help citizens of developing countries get clean water by supporting water projects.
“The acquisition of the brand really leverages our corporate social responsibility leadership,” he said. “It is really an integral part of how the company puts together our long-term strategic plan.”
Starbucks’ social responsibility image was tarnished a bit when the company signed a deal to produce a coffee liqueur with Jim Beam, the liquor-producing arm of Fortune Brands Inc. That pact prompted Pax World Funds Inc., a socially responsible mutual fund that avoids companies selling alcohol, to divest itself of $23.4 million in Starbucks stock.
Lychee Love
Lychees are making their move beyond Chinese restaurants, as the small red fruit hits the produce aisles of mainstream supermarkets throughout Southern California.
At least 10 top grocery retailers will be carrying lychees during its May-October season, the most ever, according to Robert Schueller, a spokesman for Los Angeles-based Melissa’s/World Variety Produce Inc., the largest distributor of specialty produce in the country.
Sales of the fruit, priced at $3.99 to $6.99 per pound, have grown 20 percent annually during the last five years. “We continue to see double digit growth, (and) we don’t see any sign of it not continuing,” Schueller said.
Lychees were first introduced locally in restaurants and ethnic stores, and then were stocked at specialty markets such as Bristol Farms. It’s one of several Asian fruits that are becoming more popular in mass market groceries. Others include pummelos (a pale green grapefruit-like fruit,) star fruit (a waxy green fruit with a star shape), and sweet young coconuts.
*Staff reporter Rachel Brown can be reached by phone at (323) 549-5225, ext. 224, or by e-mail at
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