Preferred Hotels & Resorts

Preferred Hotels & Resorts

Type	Private
Industry	Hospitality
Founded	1968 (1968)
Headquarters	Chicago, IL, United States
Number of locations	Nearly 40
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	John Ueberroth Chairman of the Board Gail Ueberroth Chief Creative Officer & Vice-Chairman Lindsey Ueberroth President & CEO Casey Ueberroth Chief Marketing Officer & President of Preferred Golf
Services	sales, marketing, distribution, quality assurance, and technology solutions
Owner	John Ueberroth, Gail Ueberroth, Lindsey Ueberroth, Casey Ueberroth
Number of employees	240+[1]
Website	preferredhotels.com

Preferred Hotels & Resorts comprises more than 650 independent hotels, resorts, residences, and hotel groups across 85 countries. The company's corporate headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, and it has nearly 40 sales offices worldwide.

History

Preferred Hotels & Resorts was founded by 12 North American hoteliers in 1968, originating as a referral organization for hotels, under the name Preferred Hotels Association.^[2] By the organization’s 10th anniversary in 1979, the company had begun international expansion with 14 European hotel members as well as its first member in Asia Pacific.

In 1981, the association rebranded under the name Preferred Hotels Worldwide, and ended the personal referral system previously used for membership. In 1990, Preferred Hotels Worldwide changed its name again, to Preferred Hotels & Resorts. A new progran required hotels to go through an annual inspection by an independent third party. The organization’s existing committee-run structure also transitioned at this time to a professional staff.^[3]

The company went through some major changes and developments from 1990 to 2000, such as converting to a for-profit stock corporation and creating a new holding company called IndeCorp (Independent Hotel Corporation).^[4]

In 2004, John Ueberroth became the largest shareholder of IndeCorp and was named CEO and chairman, along with his wife Gail Ueberroth as vice chairman and his daughter Lindsey Ueberroth as executive vice president.^[5] (Ueberroth was a travel industry executive who had previously been a major shareholder of the Ambassadors International travel company together with his brother, former Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth.^[6][7]) By 2005, Casey Ueberroth had also joined the family business as a managing director for the western United States. The company decided that the IndeCorp name was lacking a connection to its business,^[8] and changed its name to Preferred Hotel Group.^[9] In 2014, the company entered its 10th year as a privately owned family businesss, implementing a succession plan with Lindsey Ueberroth as president and CEO,^[10] John Ueberroth as chairman, Gail Ueberroth as vice chairman and Casey Ueberroth as chief marketing officer. ^[11][12] In March 2015, the company rebranded, with five distinct hotel collections: Legend, LVX, Lifestyle, Connect, and Preferred Residences.

Preferred Hotels & Resorts does not own, operate, or manage any of the hotels within its portfolio. All of the hotels, resorts, and serviced residences within the Preferred Hotels & Resorts portfolio are independent entities.^[13] The organization's quality standards are measured by yearly anonymous on-site inspections^[14] and real-time quality assessment scores pulled from social media sites.^[15]

References